The arrival came about 21 hours after a 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 tied to the ISS at approximately 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) on Saturday as the two spacecraft flew about 420km of coupling from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration showed. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register The final approach was delayed for about 45 minutes by a technical error with a video feed used to monitor the capsule appointment with the ISS, but otherwise proceeded smoothly. 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. Conor is in his 70s, but the company did not give his exact age. 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. Once the connection was reached, it took almost two hours to compress the sealed passageway between the space station and the crew capsule and check for leaks before the hatches opened to allow the newly arrived astronauts to board the ISS. The Ax-1 team welcomed all seven of the government-paid regular crew members already occupying the space station: three American astronauts, a German astronaut from the European Space Agency and three Russian cosmonauts. The Axiom team of four takes off, riding a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, on the first private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, on April 8, 2022. REUTERS / NASA’s online broadcast showed the four smiling Axiom astronauts, dressed in blue naval flight uniforms, floating upside down, one by one, through the gate to the space station, who were warmly welcomed with hugs and handshakes by the crew. of the ISS. Lopez-Allegria later pinned astronaut wings on the uniforms of Axiom’s three rookie spacecraft – Connor, Stibbe and Pathy – during a brief welcome ceremony. Stibbe is now the second Israeli to fly into space, after Ilan Ramon, who was killed along with six NASA crew members in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle crash. SCIENTIFIC The new arrivals brought with them dozens of scientific and biomedical experiments to be performed on the ISS, including brain health research, cardiac stem cells, cancer and aging, as well as a demonstration of technology for superficial optics production. of liquids in microgravity. The mission, a collaboration between Axiom, Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company, and NASA, has been touted by all three as an important step in expanding space-based commercial activities collectively referred to by insiders as low-orbit economies. Land or “LEO economy” for short Read more NASA officials say the trend will help the US space agency focus more of its resources on exploring major science, including the Artemis program to send humans back to the moon and eventually to Mars. While the space station has hosted political visitors from time to time, the Ax-1 mission marks the first exclusively commercial group of astronauts to be sent to the ISS for its intended purpose as a research laboratory in orbit. The Axiom mission is also SpaceX’s sixth human spaceflight in almost two years, following four NASA astronaut missions to the space station and the launch of Inspiration 4 in September, which first sent a purely civilian crew into orbit. This flight did not approach the ISS. Axiom executives say their astronauts and plans to build a private space station on Earth far exceed the astrotourism services offered to wealthy thrill seekers by companies such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic (SPCE.N). , owned by billionaire entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson respectively. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles. Editing by Angus MacSwan, Daniel Wallis and Jonathan Oatis Our role models: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
