The team of four selected by Houston-based startup Axiom Space Inc for its first space flight and orbital science mission took off Friday morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Live video from Axiom showed the 25-space SpaceX launch vehicle – consisting of a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon capsule – crossing the blue sky over the Atlantic coast of Florida. Cameras inside the crew cabin shot footage of the four men tied to the cabin under pressure, sitting quietly in their black-and-white helmet flight suits as the rocket was launched into space. Nine minutes after the launch, the upper stage of the rocket delivered the crew capsule to its preliminary orbit, according to launch commentators. Meanwhile, the reusable lower stage of the rocket, detached from the rest of the spacecraft, flew back to Earth and landed safely on a landing platform floating on a drone ship in the Atlantic. Internet commentator Kate Tice described the launch as “absolutely perfect”. “It was a hell of a ride,” a crew member was heard saying during a broadcast check on the mission. If all goes according to plan, the quartet led by retired NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria will arrive at the space station on Saturday after a flight of more than 20 hours, and the autonomous Crew Dragon will be moored at the ISS. The crew on the rocket before takeoff. Photo: AP / SpaceX SpaceX was in control of the mission for the flight from its headquarters near Los Angeles. Nasa, in addition to furnishing the launch pad, will take responsibility for the astronauts as soon as they meet with the space station to undertake eight days of scientific and biomedical research. The mission, which represents a partnership between Axiom, SpaceX and Nasa, has been touted by all three as an important step in expanding the commercial space projects collectively referred to by initiates as low-Earth or LEO economics. “We are taking commercial business off the face of the earth and placing it in space,” NASA chief Bill Nelson said before the flight. The change has allowed his body to focus more on sending humans back to the moon, Mars and other deep-space exploration, he said. Friday’s launch is also SpaceX’s sixth human spaceflight in nearly two years, following four NASA astronaut missions to the space station and the launch of “Inspiration 4” in September, which for the first time sent a crew exclusively into orbit. This flight did not moor at the ISS. While the space station has hosted political visitors from time to time, the Ax-1 mission will mark the first exclusively commercial group of astronauts to use the ISS for its intended purpose as a research laboratory in orbit. The Axiom team will share the weightless work environment with seven regular, government-paid ISS crew members: three American astronauts, one German and three Russian cosmonauts. Lopez-Alegria, 63, the Spanish commander of the Axiom mission, is also vice president of business development. The second in power is Larry Connor, a real estate and technology businessman and aerobatic aviator from Ohio who has been named as the pilot of the mission. Conor is in his 70s. the company did not give his exact age. The SpaceX rocket in flight. Photo: Rex / Shutterstock The Ax-1 team is completed by investor-philanthropist and former Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe, 64, and Canadian businessman and philanthropist Mark Pathy, 52, who both serve as mission experts. The flight makes Stibbe the second Israeli in space, after Ilan Ramon, who was killed along with six members of the Nasa crew in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle crash. Axiom crew members may seem to have a lot in common with many of the wealthy passengers who have been trampling in recent months on the Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic services offered by billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, respectively. But Axiom said its mission went far beyond space tourism, with each crew member undergoing hundreds of hours of astronaut training with both Nasa and SpaceX. The Ax-1 team will also conduct about two dozen scientific experiments, including research on brain health, cardiac stem cells, cancer and aging, as well as a demonstration of technology for producing optics using the surface tension of liquids in microgravity, company executives said. Launched in 1998, the space station has been under continuous occupation since 2000 as part of a US-Russia-led partnership, including Canada, Japan and 11 European countries. Nasa has no plans to invest in a new space station once the ISS is withdrawn, around 2030. But Nasa chose the Axiom in 2020 to build a new commercial wing in the orbiting laboratory, which is currently at length. of a soccer field. The plans eventually require the Axiom units to be disconnected from the rest of the station when it is ready to be decommissioned. Other private operators are expected to put their own stations in orbit as soon as the ISS is down. Axiom, meanwhile, has said it has contracted with SpaceX to fly three more private astronaut missions to the space station over the next two years.
