First private mission to the ISS

With the help of a “Falcon 9” rocket, the crew – consisting of the Spanish-American astronaut Michael López-Alegría, the US entrepreneur Larry Connor, the Israeli entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe and the Canadian investor Mark Pathy – lifted on Friday in a “Crew Dragon » space capsule, as shown by live images. The launch from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in the US state of Florida had previously been postponed several times.

Shortly after launch, the space capsule separated from the rocket stage, which landed upright on a ship off the Florida coast. Shortly thereafter, a rabbit stuffed animal began to hover on board the capsule, thus demonstrating the beginning of weightlessness. Such weightlessness mascots have a long tradition in manned launches. The crew was expected to arrive at the ISS on Saturday.

The whole thing is organized by the private space company Axiom Space in cooperation with the US space agency Nasa and Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.

There have been individual space tourists on the ISS several times, but the so-called “Ax-1” mission is the first completely private crew. “This endeavor is the result of long hours of training, planning and dedication by the crew and entire teams at Axiom Space, our partners at SpaceX and of course NASA’s vision,” said Axiom Space chief Michael Suffredini.

The four Axiom planes are to remain on the ISS for around a week and carry out scientific experiments there. Among other things, they will meet the German astronaut Matthias Maurer, who has been on the ISS since November and will remain until the end of April.

In addition, the US astronauts Thomas Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron and the three cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov are currently stationed on the ISS.

According to media reports, the Axiom passengers each paid around 55 million dollars for the flight. Founded in 2016 in Houston, Texas by former Nasa manager Suffredini and Iranian-American entrepreneur Kam Ghaffarian, Axiom Space sees itself as a future major player in the space market.

It is planning its own commercial space station and has already been commissioned by NASA to build a commercial ISS module.

Commander López-Alegría, who works for Axiom Space, had emphasized in advance that they did not see themselves as “space tourists”. “I think space tourism has an important role to play, but that’s not the point here. This is definitely not a vacation for my crew members.”

Some scientists doubt that. “I would say that more than 80 percent of the mission is about the private pleasure of the participants, and less than 20 percent is about science,” said Ulrich Walter, professor of space technology at the Technical University in Munich the German Press Agency. “The Axiom participants will not be allowed to do the really important experiments.”

The experiments planned by the Axiom pilots should be seen more as a kind of “fig leaf”, said Walter – but also emphasized: “I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. I’m a fan of space tourism. This shows that many people would actually be able to fly into space.”

The visitors would probably not disturb the ISS astronauts either. “There is enough space and the rosters are not too tight.”

One of the original goals when NASA was founded was to support commercial industry, emphasized Kathy Lueders, head of the US space agency’s manned space program, after the launch on Friday.

“And here we are 60 years later, making this possible with this mission.” The Axiom flyers could see what the “professional astronauts” were doing on board the ISS, but they could also take care of their own work. “Learning to work together peacefully in space moves us all forward.”