Four private citizens are set to make history Friday by launching into orbit on the first wholly private mission to the International Space Station with an all-civilian crew
The flight, organized by the Houston-based company Axiom Space, is set to lift off Friday at 11:17 a.m. EST from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The Axiom mission, know as Ax-1, won’t be the first time an all-civilian crew has flown to space. That milestone was set last year when SpaceX launched four private citizens on a three-day orbital joyride aboard the company’s Crew Dragon capsule. It will, however, be the first time an all-civilian crew visits the space station, marking a key breakthrough for both space tourism and the rapidly expanding commercial spaceflight industry.
The upcoming launch follows a pair of high-profile trips to suborbital space last year by billionaire entrepreneurs Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos. It’s also just the latest example of how human spaceflight — once limited to governments and their space agencies — is now flourishing as a commercial enterprise.
What sets Axiom’s flight apart from previous trips with private citizens to low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station is that it won’t just be a single paying customer accompanied by a group of professional astronauts, said Derek Hassman, Axiom Space’s operations director.
“In the case of the Ax-1 mission, it’s very different in that the entire crew [is] unaffiliated with any government,” Hassman said Thursday in a preflight news briefing.
Four men will take part in the Ax-1 mission, led by Michael López-Alegría, a retired NASA astronaut who now serves as the vice president of business development for Axiom Space. He will be joined by three paying customers: American real estate investor Larry Connor, Canadian businessman Mark Pathy and Eytan Stibbe, a former fighter pilot from Israel.
“This collection of pioneers — the first space crew of its kind — represents a defining moment in humanity’s eternal pursuit of exploration and progress,” López-Alegría said in a statement back in January, when the mission was first announced.
The crew members will launch in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket. The foursome is expected to spend eight days at the space station, where they will participate in a host of science experiments and philanthropic projects, including health-related research for the Mayo Clinic and the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
Connor, Pathy and Stibbe paid $55 million apiece for the experience, as The Associated Press reported this year.
Axiom Space has called the Ax-1 mission a “precursor” to commercializing low-Earth orbit. The company said it intends to fly at least three other commercial flights to the ISS and is eventually planning to construct its own privately-funded space station in orbit.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
