The appointment came about 21 hours after the team of four representing Houston-based startup Axiom Space Inc took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Friday aboard a Falcon 9 rocket launched by SpaceX. The Crew Dragon capsule was launched into orbit by the rocket that was docked at the ISS at approximately 8:30 a.m. showed the internet transmission of the link. The connection has been confirmed! pic.twitter.com/YPyF3aRwO7 – SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 9, 2022 The story goes on under the ad The final approach was delayed due to a technical error that interrupted the video flow used to monitor the capsule appointment with the ISS. Snafu forced the Dragon Crew to stop and hold its position 20 meters away from the station for about 45 minutes, while the control of the mission solved the problem. Trending Stories
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Once the connection was reached, it was expected to take about two more hours to compress the sealed passageway between the space station and the crew capsule and check for leaks before the hatches opened, allowing the newly arrived astronauts to board the IS.
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The multinational Axiom team, which planned to spend eight days in orbit, was led by retired Spanish-born NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, 63, the company’s vice president of business development. His second was Larry Connor, a real estate and technology businessman and aerobatic aviator from Ohio who was named as the mission pilot. Connor is in his 70s, but the company did not give his exact age. Mission # Ax1 from @Axiom_Space with four astronauts to @SpaceX Dragon Endeavor moored at the station today at 8:29 a.m. ET. pic.twitter.com/FaoRTrKSKC – International Space Station (@Space_Station) April 9, 2022 The story goes on under the ad Completing the Ax-1 crew was investor-philanthropist and former Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe, 64, and Canadian businessman and philanthropist Mark Pathy, 52, who both served as mission experts. Stibbe became the second Israeli to fly into space, after Ilan Ramon, who was killed along with six NASA comrades in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle crash. They will join the existing ISS crew of seven regular, government-paid crew members of the space station – three American astronauts, a German astronaut from the European Space Agency and three Russian cosmonauts. (Report by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Edited by Angus MacSwan and Daniel Wallis)
