The first fully private mission arrived at the International Space Station early Saturday with a four-member crew from startup Axiom Space. NASA hailed the tripartite partnership with Axiom and SpaceX as a key step toward commercializing the area of ​​space known as the “Low Earth Orbit,” allowing the organization to focus on more ambitious journeys deeper into the world. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with Crew Dragon Endeavor capsule docked at 12:29 GMT on Saturday, and the crew entered the space station almost two hours later, after being launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday. The commander of the Axiom 1 (Ax-1) mission is former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, a dual U.S. and Spanish national who flew into space four times during his 20-year career and last visited the ISS. in 2007. He is joined by three paying colleagues: US real estate investor Larry Connor, Canadian investor and philanthropist Mark Pathy, and former Israeli fighter pilot, investor and philanthropist Eytan Stibbe. “We are here to experience this, but we understand that there is a responsibility,” Connor said in a comment posted on NASA Live Stream. As the first political crew, he said, “they have to do it right.” The most widely quoted ticket price – which includes eight days at the outpost, before the eventual collapse of the Atlantic – is $ 55 million. While wealthy individuals have visited the ISS in the past, the Ax-1 is the first mission to include an all-private crew flying a private spacecraft to the outpost. Houston-based Axiom pays SpaceX for shipping, and NASA also charges Axiom for using the ISS. NASA Deputy Chief of Staff Bale Dalton, left, and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson watch the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft to Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1). Research projects Located at an ISS orbit 250 miles (400 km) above sea level, the quartet will conduct 25 research projects, including a demonstration of MIT technology of smart tiles forming a robotic swarm and self-assembling in space architecture. Another experiment involves using cancer stem cells to grow small tumors and then utilizing the accelerated microgravity aging environment to detect biomarkers for early cancer detection. “Our guys don’t go up there and float for eight days, taking pictures and looking out of the dome,” Derek Hassmann, Axiom Space’s business director, told reporters in a pre-launch briefing. In addition, crew member Stibbe plans to pay tribute to his late friend Ilan Ramon, Israel’s first astronaut, who died in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle crash when the spacecraft crashed on re-entry. Pages from Ramon’s space diary, as well as souvenirs from his children, will be brought to the station by Stibe. The Axiom crew will live and work with the station’s regular crew: currently three Americans and one German on the US side and three Russians on the Russian side. The company has partnered on a total of four missions with SpaceX, and NASA has already approved the second, the Ax-2. Axiom sees travel as the first steps in a larger goal: to build its own private space station. The first section will be released in 2024. The plan is for the station to initially connect to the ISS, before finally flying autonomously when the latter withdraws and leaves sometime after 2030. The first private mission is ready for launch on the ISS © 2022 AFP
Report: The first private mission arrives at the International Space Station (2022, April 9) retrieved on April 9, 2022 from
This document is subject to copyright. Except for any fair transaction for the purposes of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without our written permission. Content is provided for informational purposes only.