The Axiom Mission 3 launches to the International Space Station with crew members Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria of the U.S./Spain, Pilot Walter Villadei of Italy, Mission Specialist Alper Gezeravcı of Turkey, and ESA (European Space Agency) challenge astronaut Marcus Wandt of Sweden, at Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. January 18, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Turkey’s first astronaut and three different crew members representing Europe had been launched from Florida on January 28 on a voyage to the International Space Station within the newest commercially organized mission from Texas startup Axiom Space.
A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the Axiom quartet lifted off about an hour earlier than sundown from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, starting a deliberate 36-hour flight to the orbiting laboratory.
The launch was proven dwell on an Axiom webcast.
The autonomously operated Crew Dragon was anticipated to attain the International Space Station (ISS) early on Saturday morning and dock with the orbiting outpost some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.
The mission was the third such flight organized by Houston-based Axiom over the previous two years as the corporate builds on its enterprise of placing astronauts sponsored by overseas governments and personal enterprise into Earth orbit.
The firm fees its clients no less than $55 million for every astronaut seat.
Originally scheduled for January 17, the launch was postponed for twenty-four hours to permit extra time for remaining inspections and information evaluation, together with for a problem associated to the parachute system used to gradual the capsule’s return descent earlier than splashdown, Axiom and SpaceX mentioned.
Plans for the Axiom-3 mission name for the crew to spend roughly 14 days aboard the ISS conducting greater than 30 scientific experiments, most of them targeted on the consequences of spaceflight on human well being and illness.
More symbolically, the mission displays the rising variety of nations venturing into Earth orbit as a manner of enhancing international status, army prowess and satellite-based communications.
Turkey, a longtime applicant for EU membership, was poised to enter the exclusive-but-expanding membership of ISS-guest international locations by sending Alper Gezeravcı, 44, a Turkish Air Force veteran, on his nation’s debut human spaceflight as an Ax-3 mission specialist.
He was being joined by: Italian Air Force Colonel Walter Villadei, 49, Ax-3’s designated pilot; Swedish aviator Marcus Wandt, 43, one other mission specialist; and retired NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, 65, a twin citizen of Spain and the United States appearing as mission commander. López-Alegría, an Axiom govt, additionally commanded the corporate’s first mission to the ISS in April 2022.
Axiom billed the flight as “the first all-European commercial astronaut mission” to the space station.
In May 2023, Axiom-2 launched a workforce of two Americans and two Saudis, together with Rayyanah Barnawi, a biomedical scientist who grew to become the first Arab girl ever despatched to orbit, on an eight-day mission to the ISS.
SpaceX, the privately funded rocket and satellite tv for pc firm of billionaire Elon Musk, offers Axiom’s launch autos and crew capsules below contract, because it has for NASA missions to the ISS. SpaceX additionally runs mission management for its rocket launches from the corporate’s headquarters close to Los Angeles.
NASA, in addition to furnishing the launch web site at Cape Canaveral, assumes accountability for the astronauts as soon as they rendezvous with the space station.
Axiom, an eight-year-old enterprise headed by NASA’s former ISS program supervisor, is one in all a handful of corporations constructing a business space station of its personal supposed to finally exchange the ISS, which NASA expects to retire round 2030.
Launched to orbit in 1998, the ISS has been constantly occupied since 2000 below a U.S.-Russian-led partnership that features Canada, Japan and 11 international locations that belong to the European Space Agency.
