The first all-private team of astronauts to ever fly aboard the International Space Station (ISS) left the orbital post on Sunday to begin a descent back to Earth, completing a two-week scientific mission hailed as a milestone in commercial spaceflight.
A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying a team of four from the Houston-based launch company Axiom Space disembarked from the ISS at around 9:10 p.m. EDT (1:10 a.m. Monday) to embark on a 16-hour return flight. of NASA live shown.
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Axiom astronauts, dressed in their white and black helmet suits, were spotted tied up in the cockpit shortly before the spacecraft separated from the station, orbiting about 250 miles (420 km) above Earth. A few short rocket launches then pushed the capsule safely off the ISS.
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If all goes well, the Dragon capsule, called Endeavor, will parachute into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida on Monday around 13:00 EDT (1700 GMT).
The flight home was delayed for several days due to unfavorable weather in the spray zone, which extended the stay of the Axiom crew in orbit well beyond the original take-off date early last week.
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The multinational team was led by Spanish-born retired NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Allegria, 63, vice president of Axiom Business Development. Larry Connor, 72, a real estate technology entrepreneur and pilot from Ohio, was the second commander.
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Graduates of the Ax-1 crew included philanthropist investor and former Israeli fighter pilot Eitan Stibe, 64, and Canadian businessman and philanthropist Mark Patti, 52, both working as mission specialists.
Launched by NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on April 8, they spent two weeks aboard the ISS with seven regular, government-paid crews on the space station: three American astronauts, a German astronaut and three Russian astronauts.
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The Axiom Quartet became the first fully commercial team of astronauts ever launched into space, bringing with it equipment for two dozen scientific experiments, biomedical research and demonstrations of orbital technology. Read the whole story
Axiom, NASA and SpaceX have highlighted the mission as a turning point in expanding privately funded space trade, which is what industry insiders call a “low-Earth economy” or a “LEO economy” for short.
The Ax-1 marks the sixth human spaceflight spacecraft to launch in nearly two years after four NASA astronaut missions to the ISS, plus Inspiration 4 in September, which sent an all-civilian crew into Earth orbit for the first time, though not to the space station.
SpaceX, the private rocket company founded by Elon Musk, CEO of electric car maker Tesla Inc. TSLA.O, has a contract to fly three more Axiom astronaut missions to the ISS over the next two years. The price for such excursions remains high.
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Axiom charges clients $ 50 million to $ 60 million on the spot, according to Mo Islam, head of research at investment company Republic Capital, which owns stakes in both Axiom and SpaceX.
Axiom was also selected by NASA in 2020 to build a new commercial addition to the space station, which a US-Russian-led consortium of 15 countries has been operating for more than two decades. Plans call for the Axiom segment to eventually replace the ISS when the rest of the space station retires around 2030.
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(Report by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; edited by Sandra Mahler and Bradley Peret)
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