First all-private astronaut team aboard space station heads for splashdown

The first all-private astronaut crew to fly aboard the International Space Station (ISS) departed Monday for landing off the coast of Florida, completing a two-week mission that NASA has touted as a milestone in commercial spaceflight.

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A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the four-member team of Houston-based startup Axiom Space Inc began its return flight on Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT (6:30 a.m. IST Monday) when it dislodged from the space station orbiting approximately 420 km above Earth.

The Crew Dragon was expected to parachute into the Atlantic Ocean around 1:00 PM EDT Monday (10:30 PM IST Monday), capping a 16-hour drive home from Earth orbit that had been delayed several days due to unfavorable weather conditions. again.

The multinational Axiom team was led by Spanish-born retired NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, 63, the company’s vice president for business development. His second in command was Larry Connor, 72, an Ohio technology entrepreneur and aerobatics aviator who served as the mission pilot.

Joining them as “mission specialists” were investor-philanthropist and former Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe, 64, and Canadian businessman and philanthropist Mark Pathy, 52.

Launched on April 8 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, they spent 15 days aboard the space station with the seven regular, government-paid ISS crew members: three American astronauts, a German astronaut and three Russian cosmonauts.

The ISS has hosted several wealthy space tourists from time to time over the years.

But the Axiom Quartet was the first all-commercial team ever to be welcomed into the space station as working astronauts, with 25 science and biomedical experiments to conduct in orbit. The package included research into brain health, cardiac stem cells, cancer and aging, as well as a technology demonstration to produce optics using the surface tension of liquids in microgravity.

Axiom, NASA and SpaceX have hailed the mission as a milestone in the expansion of privately funded space-based commerce, which industry insiders dub the “low Earth orbit” or “LEO economy” for short.

It was SpaceX’s sixth human spaceflight in nearly two years, following four NASA astronaut missions to the ISS and the September “Inspiration 4” flight that first sent an entirely private crew into orbit, but not to the Earth. space station.

SpaceX, the private rocket company founded by Elon Musk, CEO of electric car maker Tesla Inc, has been hired to fly three more Axiom astronaut missions to the ISS over the next two years. The price tag for such outings is high.

Axiom charges customers $50 million to $60 million per seat, according to Mo Islam, head of research at the investment firm Republic Capital, which has interests in both Axiom and SpaceX.

Axiom was also selected by NASA in 2020 to build a new commercial addition to the space station, which has been operated for more than two decades by a US-Russian-led consortium of 15 countries. Plans are for the Axiom segment to eventually replace the ISS when the rest of the station retires around 2030.

• The first all-private astronaut crew to fly aboard the International Space Station (ISS) departed Monday for landing off the coast of Florida, completing a two-week mission that NASA has touted as a milestone in commercial spaceflight.

• Launched on April 8 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, they spent 15 days aboard the space station with the seven regular, government-paid ISS crew members: three American astronauts, a German astronaut and three Russian cosmonauts.

• It was SpaceX’s sixth human spaceflight in nearly two years.