The first fully private mission to the International Space Station (ISS) was yesterday to blast off with a four-member crew from start-up company Axiom Space.
The partnership has been hailed by NASA, which sees it as a key step in its goal to commercialize the region of space known as “low-Earth orbit,” leaving the agency to focus on more ambitious endeavors deeper into the cosmos.
Takeoff was set for 11:17am from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a SpaceX rocket.
Photo: AFP
Commanding the Axiom-1 mission would be former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, a dual citizen of the US and Spain.
He is joined by three paying crewmates: American real-estate investor Larry Connor, Canadian businessman Mark Pathy and Israeli former fighter pilot and entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe.
The widely reported price for tickets — which includes eight days on the outpost — was US$55 million.
Unlike the attention-grabbing suborbital flights carried out by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, Axiom said its mission should not be considered tourism.
On board the ISS, which orbits 400km above sea level, the quartet are to carry out scientific research projects, including on aging in space, experiments with stem cells and a technology demonstration of a self-assembling spacecraft.
“The distinction is that our guys aren’t going up there and floating around for eight days taking pictures and looking out of the cupola,” Derek Hassmann, operations director of Axiom Space, told reporters at a pre-launch briefing. “I mean we have a very intensive and research-oriented timeline plan for them.”
In addition, Stibbe plans to carry out a tribute to his friend Ilan Ramon, Israel’s first astronaut, who died in the 2003 Columbia disaster when the space shuttle disintegrated upon re-entry.
Surviving pages from Ramon’s space diary, as well as mementos from his children, would be brought to the station by Stibbe.
The Axiom crew are to live and work alongside the station’s regular crew: three Americans and a German on the US side, and three Russians on the Russian side.
Axiom sees the voyage as the first step of a grander goal: to build its own private space station.
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