A pioneering astronaut mission is on its way to the International Space
Station.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched Ax-1, a mission from Houston-based company
Axiom Space, today (April 8) at 11:17 a.m. EDT (1517 GMT) from NASA's
Kennedy Space Center here on Florida's Space Coast.
None of Ax-1's four crewmembers are government spaceflyers. It's the
first-ever fully private crewed mission to launch to the orbiting lab.
"Together, a new chapter begins," Axiom Space's Jon Rackham said during a
webcast of the launch today. "Godspeed, Ax-1!"
With the picture-perfect liftoff, the crew officially began a 10-day journey
that will include eight days aboard the International Space Station. Ax-1's
SpaceX Dragon capsule is set to dock with the orbiting lab around 7:45 a.m.
EDT (1145 GMT) tomorrow (April 9).
Ax-1 marked the fifth flight for this Falcon 9's first stage. And the
booster made its fifth landing as well, coming down for a pinpoint touchdown
9.5 minutes after liftoff on the SpaceX droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas,
which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
"It's been a year and a half or so of very hard work since we've been
designing the mission, essentially from scratch, doing something that's
never been done before in exactly this way," Derek Hassmann, the operations
director for Axiom Space, said during a pre-launch news conference yesterday
(April 7). "It's very rewarding."
Ax-1 is commanded by retired NASA astronaut Michael López-AlegrÃa, who is
now vice president of business development for Axiom. He launched today
alongside mission pilot Larry Connor and mission specialists Eytan Stibbe
and Mark Pathy.
Connor is a real estate entrepreneur and pilot familiar with 16 different
aircraft; Pathy is the CEO and chair of the Canadian sustainable investment
company MARVIK; and Stibbe is the founding partner of the Vital Capital
Impact investment fund.
Stibbe was also a fighter pilot with the Israel Air Force (IAF) and will be
the second Israeli person ever to reach space. The first, Ilan Ramon, was an
astronaut who died during the space shuttle Columbia tragedy in 2003. In
Ramon's memory, Stibbe and the Ramon family co-founded the nonprofit Ramon
Foundation.
Commander López-AlegrÃa did not pay for his place aboard the mission and
will help to guide the other crew members through the voyage. Each of the
three other crewmates is thought to have spent roughly $55 million on his
seat.
Still, López-AlegrÃa and other mission team members have stressed that the
three paying customers are not "space tourists."
Ax-1 "is too often called space tourism," López-AlegrÃa told Space.com
during a conversation last year. "I would say it is not tourism at all."
"This is real work that is requiring a lot of preparation, and I don't think
it'll be relaxing," he added.
Other mission team members have echoed this sentiment.
"The crew is very well trained; they've spent many hundreds of hours
prepping for this flight," record-setting former NASA astronaut Peggy
Whitson, who is now Axiom Space's director of human spaceflight, said during
an April 1 pre-flight news conference.
The crew has a number of tasks planned for the mission, such as conducting
25 different scientific experiments. Among these experiments is a "brain
headset" from Israeli startup Brain.Space that Stibbe is carrying with him.
This experiment aims to observe how the brain behaves in space and is one of
many investigations Stibbe is bringing on behalf of the Ramon Foundation.
The Ax-1 crew's experiments will study other topics as well, including
aging, stem cells, heart health and more, Hassmann shared yesterday.
"This really does represent the first step, where a bunch of individuals who
want to do something meaningful in low Earth orbit that aren't members of a
government are able to take this opportunity," Michael Suffredini, president
and CEO of Axiom Space, said during the April 1 news conference.
Ax-1 is not just the first crewed launch for Axiom, or the first fully
private crewed mission to the space station. For Axiom Space, it is the
first major step toward realizing its own commercial space station in low
Earth orbit (LEO), which is set to also be the first of its kind.
"The company was formed in order to build the next commercial space
station," Hassmann said during yesterday's briefing. He added that Ax-1 is a
precursor mission to building that station.
Axiom plans to "launch that first module of that commercial space station in
late 2024. It will be connected to the ISS and will gradually build out that
space station between that period for 2024 into 2030 with the goal of
eventually separating and providing the commercial LEO destination of choice
once ISS has been retired," Hassman said.
"So this precursor mission is the first of several that will lead up to that
2024 module launch," he added.
Ax-1 may be the first fully private crewed mission to the ISS, but it's not
the first all-civilian journey to orbit. That distinction goes to
Inspiration4, a three-day, four-person mission that SpaceX launched in
September 2021.
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