Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria, Larry Connor, Eytan Stibbe, and Mark Pathy are now aboard the International Space Station following Crew Dragon’s hatch opening at 10:13 a.m. EDT, Saturday, April 9. It is the first mission with an entirely private crew to arrive at the orbiting laboratory.
After a journey of almost 21 hours, Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria, Larry Connor, Eytan Stibbe, and Mark Pathy arrived at the International Space Station at 8:29 a.m. EDT Saturday, April 9. Crew Dragon Endeavour docked to the orbital complex while the spacecraft were flying about 260 miles (420 kilometers) above the central Atlantic Ocean.
Dragon Endeavour’s docking was delayed approximately 45 minutes as the space station teams, including mission controllers at NASA and SpaceX, worked to troubleshoot an issue preventing the crew members on station from receiving views from Dragon’s center line camera of the Harmony’s modules docking port. Mission teams worked to route video using a SpaceX ground station to the crew on the space station allowing Dragon to proceed with docking.
Following Dragon’s link up to the Harmony module, NASA astronaut and station commander Tom Marshburn pressurized the space in between the Dragon and station hatches and performed a leak check before opening the hatches to welcome the private astronaut crew.
Axiom Mission 1 astronauts Michael Lopez Algeria, Larry Connor, Mark Pathy, and Eytan Stibbe docked to the zenith port of the Harmony module of the International Space Station on April 9, 2022, following a launch on April 8 on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. The four crew members will conduct an eight-day mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory before undocking to return to Earth on April 17. This is the first spaceflight for Axiom Space and the first all-private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
The Axiom crew are joining Expedition 67 crew members, including NASA astronauts Marshburn, Raja Chari, and Kayla Barron, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Matthias Maurer, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Sergey Korsokov, and Denis Matveev.
When the Axiom Space Mission 1 (Ax-1) arrived at the International Space Station, it was the first mission with an entirely private crew to arrive at the orbiting laboratory. It represents both a culmination of NASA’s efforts to foster a commercial market in low-Earth orbit and a beginning of a new era of space exploration that enables more people to fly on more kinds of missions.
The Ax-1 crew will spend more than one week aboard the orbiting laboratory conducting science, education, and commercial activities.
Gallery of SpaceX Axiom Ax-1 Mission Launch Images
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7 Comments
$220 million wasted on a vanity event for four ultra wealthy individuals. What an absolute waste of resources. Space travel was once an inspirational event for all of humanity. It has now been reduced to this nonsense. They bring no expertise whatsoever to the ISS. So is everyone OK with our investments in the ISS being reduced to a space tourism destination? Just imagine what $220 million could have done for advancing anything that would actually do anything positive for mankind, our planet, or any kind of research to improve almost anything.
$220M dollars was not wasted as the taxpayers of the U.S.A. invested in the ISS and the private citizens covered the cost of the transport. There is a hope in moving Space access beyond the military, nation states, and highly-trained select individuals into an opportunity that any free man can experience.
$55M per individual for a round-trip adventure is absolutely phenomenal. Given time, Elon Musk and SpaceX may cut the cost in half or more. But to reduce the cost, spacecrafts need to enjoy the economy of scale which necessitate standardized builds and routine best practices and fleets of reusable vehicles.
I would much rather fly in space for a day than take a 30-day ocean cruise. Bravo to anyone financially able to secure a reservation to travel into Space as the more demand there is the lower the entry price will become.
The privatization of space travel is an insult to the men and women who were the heroes who took those tremendous risks. Space travel for profit to the space station is a waste of resources that need to be used for science.
Money doesn’t matter in this case. Money is just a human invention to prove things make sense. But in the end, here what I see is just people going up on orbit and down on the earth for no scope, so wasting propellant and destroying the environment. I agree with space exploration, but it needs to make sense first
Your jealousy is showing. Have you tried crying about it? It might make you feel better.
There is so much more that money could be doing to benefit society. There are children suffering in the US that could have been helped. Instead they piss it away for entertainment.
All you people saying this is useless, a waste, that these guys are going up for a pleasure cruise are showing you have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about. Try actually doing some research on a subject before criticizing it, as you’re making yourselves look like complete morons.