A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a “Crew Dragon” space capsule and the private astronauts on board takes off from the Cape Canaveral Cosmodrome. Photo: Joel Kowsky/NASA/AP/dpa
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(Photo: dpa)
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According to media reports, the Axiom passengers should each pay around 55 million dollars for the flight Shortly thereafter, the astronauts floated through a hatch inside the station and gathered for a first group photo in zero gravity, as shown by live images from the US space agency Nasa. Previously, they had to wait in their space capsule for around 45 minutes at a distance of 20 meters from the ISS because of a problem with a video camera that was needed for the docking manoeuvre.
The group — consisting of Spanish-American astronaut Michael López-Alegría, US entrepreneur Larry Connor, Israeli entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe and Canadian investor Mark Pathy — was on Friday in a “Crew Dragon” space capsule from Cape Canaveral Cosmodrome US State of Florida started. Their trip to the ISS is organized by the private space company Axiom Space in cooperation with 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. The four Axiom aviators are to remain on board the ISS for around a week and carry out scientific experiments.
Many millions of dollars for each space ticket
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According to media reports, the Axiom passengers each paid around 55 million dollars (about 50 million euros) for the flight. Founded in 2016 in Houston, Texas by former NASA manager Michael 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, emphasized in advance that they do 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.”
Experiments as a “fig leaf”?
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 either.”
Among other things, the Axiom pilots will meet the German astronaut Matthias Maurer on the ISS, who has been at the station since November and is scheduled to stay until the end of April. The US astronauts Thomas Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron and the three cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov are also currently working on the ISS.
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