On Saturday, an exclusively European crew, including Turkey’s first astronaut, reached the International Space Station, courtesy of a mission arranged by Axiom Space.
Axiom Mission 3 (Ax-3), the company’s third journey to the space laboratory, distinguishes itself as the initial mission where all three paid seats were acquired by national agencies, marking a departure from individual purchases by affluent individuals.
The spacecraft, as per NASA’s live broadcast, docked at the ISS at 1043 GMT and successfully completed boarding within a span of about two hours.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon, securely fastened atop a Falcon 9 rocket, initiated its space journey on Thursday, launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Axiom Space’s website disclosed that the spacecraft accomplished its journey in about 36 hours, reaching the International Space Station (ISS) situated approximately 260 miles (420 kilometers) above Earth.
Turkish pilot and air force colonel Alper Gezeravci is joined by Walter Villadei, an Italian air force colonel who has previously flown to the edge of space on a Virgin Galactic space plane, and by Marcus Wandt from Sweden, who is representing the European Space Agency.
They are led by Axiom’s Chief Astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, a Spanish and US citizen and former NASA astronaut.
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The Axiom-3 team were welcomed with hugs by the seven crew members already aboard the ISS — from Japan, Denmark, the United States and Russia.
They will spend about two weeks carrying out 30 experiments, learning more about the impact of microgravity on the human body, advancing industrial processes and more.
Axiom Space was founded in 2016 by Michael Suffredini, a former ISS program manager for NASA, and entrepreneur Kam Ghaffarian.
Alongside orchestrating private missions to the orbital outpost, the company is actively involved in the development of spacesuits for upcoming NASA missions to the Moon.
Additionally, the company is constructing a commercial space station, with the initial plan to dock it to the ISS before eventually detaching and orbiting independently ahead of the ISS’s retirement.
While the precise expenses for Ax-3 remain undisclosed, when the program was initially announced in 2018—entailing the chartering of SpaceX hardware and compensating NASA for services—the projected cost was $55 million per seat.
More recently, it was reported by spacenews.com that Hungary is contemplating a $100 million deal with Axiom for a forthcoming mission, which is anticipated to include one astronaut.
Britain, in its pursuit of establishing a post-Brexit space strategy, has entered into an agreement for a prospective mission that will involve UK astronauts.