The first all-private astronaut team to orbit aboard the International Space Station (ISS) departed the outpost on Sunday to begin a descent back to Earth, capping a two-week science mission hailed as a milestone in commercial spaceflight.
A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the four-man team from the Houston-based start-up company Axiom Space undocked from the ISS at about 1:10am GMT yesterday to embark on a 16-hour return flight, a live NASA videoconference showed.
The Axiom astronauts, garbed in their helmeted white-and-black spacesuits, were seen strapped into the crew cabin shortly before the spacecraft separated from the station, orbiting about 420km above Earth. A couple of brief rocket thrusts then pushed the capsule safely clear of the ISS.
The Dragon capsule Endeavour was scheduled to parachute into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida yesterday at about 5pm GMT.
The flight home was postponed for several days due to unfavorable weather at the splashdown zone, extending the Axiom crew’s stay in orbit well beyond its original departure date early last week.
The multinational team was led by Spanish-born retired NASA astronaut and Axiom vice president for business development Michael Lopez-Alegria, 63. Larry Connor, 72, a real estate-technology entrepreneur and aerobatics aviator from Ohio, was second in command.
Rounding out the crew were investor-philanthropist and former Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe, 64, and Canadian businessman and philanthropist Mark Pathy, 52, both serving as mission specialists.
Launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on April 8, they spent two weeks aboard the ISS with the seven regular, government-paid crew of the space station: three US astronauts, a German astronaut and three Russian cosmonauts.
The Axiom quartet became the first all-commercial astronaut team ever launched to the space station, taking with them equipment for two dozen science experiments, biomedical research and technology demonstrations to conduct in orbit.
Axiom, NASA and SpaceX have touted the mission as a turning point in the expansion of privately funded space-based commerce, constituting what industry insiders call the “low-Earth orbit economy,” or “LEO economy” for short.
The Axiom mission marks the sixth human spaceflight SpaceX has launched in nearly two years, following four NASA missions to the ISS, plus the Inspiration4 flight in September last year, which sent an all-civilian crew into Earth orbit for the first time, although not to the space station.
SpaceX, the private rocket company founded by Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk, has been contracted to fly three more Axiom astronaut missions to the ISS over the next two years. The price tag for such outings remains high.
Axiom charges customers US$50 million to US$60 million per seat, said Mo Islam, head of research for the investment firm Republic Capital, which holds stakes in Axiom and SpaceX.
Axiom was also selected by NASA in 2020 to build a new commercial addition to the space station, which a consortium of 15 countries, led by the US and Russia, has operated for more than two decades. Plans call for the Axiom segment to eventually replace the ISS when the rest of the space station is retired sometime about 2030.
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