- Ax-1 and Artemis 1 on adjacent pads before launch
- Launch of Ax-1
- Falcon 9 and Ax-1 pitching downrange
- Ax-1 approaching the ISS
Names | Ax-1 |
---|---|
Mission type | Private spaceflight to the ISS |
Operator | |
COSPAR ID | 2022-037A |
SATCAT no. | 52204 |
Website | axiomspace |
Mission duration | 17 days, 1 hour, 48 minutes |
Spacecraft properties | |
Spacecraft | Crew Dragon Endeavour |
Spacecraft type | Crew Dragon |
Manufacturer | SpaceX |
Launch mass | 12,519 kg (27,600 lb) |
Landing mass | 9,616 kg (21,200 lb) |
Crew | |
Crew size | 4 |
Members | |
Start of mission | |
Launch date | 8 April 2022, 15:17:12 UTC (11:17:12 am EDT) [1] |
Rocket | Falcon 9 Block 5 (B1062.5) |
Launch site | Kennedy, LC‑39A |
Contractor | SpaceX |
End of mission | |
Recovered by | MV Megan |
Landing date | 25 April 2022, 17:06 UTC [2] |
Landing site | Atlantic Ocean |
Orbital parameters | |
Reference system | Geocentric orbit |
Regime | Low Earth orbit |
Inclination | 51.66° |
Docking with ISS | |
Docking port | Harmony zenith |
Docking date | 9 April 2022, 12:29 UTC |
Undocking date | 25 April 2022, 01:10 UTC |
Time docked | 15 days, 12 hours, 41 minutes |
Axiom Mission 1 patch Clockwise from left: Connor, Stibbe, Pathy and López-Alegría |
Axiom Mission 1 (or Ax-1) [3] was a privately funded and operated crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission was operated by Axiom Space out of Axiom's Mission Control Center MCC-A [4] in Houston, Texas. The flight launched on 8 April 2022 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. [5] The spacecraft used was a SpaceX Crew Dragon. The crew consisted of Michael López-Alegría, [6] a Spaniard-American and a professionally trained astronaut hired by Axiom, Eytan Stibbe [7] from Israel, [8] Larry Connor from the United States, [8] and Mark Pathy from Canada. [8]
Axiom Space was founded in 2016 with the goal of creating the world's first commercial space station. In early 2020, NASA announced that Axiom had been granted access to the forward port of the ISS' Harmony module, to which Axiom plans to berth the first node of the Axiom Orbital Segment; a complex that could grow to five pressurized modules after 2024 with a large observation window – similar to the current Cupola mounted on the Nadir side of Tranquility . This new addition to the ISS will be able to facilitate the company's activities in low Earth orbit. [9] Prior to the first module's launch as early as 2024, Axiom planned to organize and fly crewed missions to the ISS, consisting of either paying private astronauts or astronauts from public agencies or private organizations. [10] In March 2020, Axiom announced they would charter a flight to the ISS with SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft as early as late 2021. [11] This mission is the first wholly commercially operated crewed mission to the ISS, and one of the first dedicated orbital private crew missions, alongside Roscosmos' Soyuz MS-20 mission in December 2021. [12] Following their first flight, Axiom plans to offer crewed flights to the ISS as often as twice per year, "aligning with the flight opportunities as they are made available by NASA". [13]
Michael López-Alegría was chosen as a commercial astronaut. [6] The other three seats were reserved for space tourists, announced to cost US$55 million each. [14]
Following the launch of Crew Dragon Demo-2 in May 2020, the first crewed test flight of Dragon 2, Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini said that they planned to announce the names of the crew in "a month or so"; [15] Ars Technica reported that the full crew complement would "probably be unveiled in January 2021". [16] On 26 January 2021, Axiom revealed the full crew of the mission, consisting of Michael López-Alegría, Larry Connor, Mark Pathy and Eytan Stibbe. [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] They also announced Peggy Whitson as the backup commander for the mission and John Shoffner as backup pilot. [22] [23] Eytan Stibbe's backup was his daughter Dr. Shir Stibbe. [24] Michael Lopez-Alegria is a former NASA astronaut and Axiom Space VP. [25] John Shoffner is an airshow pilot and entrepreneur, and not an Axiom employee nor a government trained astronaut. [18] Peggy Whitson is a former NASA astronaut and Axiom consultant. [25]
It was reported that actor Tom Cruise and film producer Doug Liman would be passengers for a movie project, [26] but it was later announced that they would fly on a subsequent flight. [27]
Position | Astronaut | |
---|---|---|
Commander | / Michael López-Alegría, Axiom Space Fifth spaceflight | |
Pilot | Larry Connor First spaceflight Space tourist | |
Mission Specialist 1 | Eytan Stibbe First spaceflight Space tourist | |
Mission Specialist 2 | Mark Pathy First spaceflight Space tourist |
Position | Astronaut | |
---|---|---|
Commander | Peggy Whitson, Axiom Space | |
Pilot | John Shoffner Space tourist | |
Mission Specialist 1 | Shir Stibbe Space tourist |
The mission launched at 11:17 EDT on 8 April 2022. [5] It launched atop a Falcon 9 Block 5 launch vehicle from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), a NASA-owned launch pad leased to SpaceX for Falcon 9 launches. The mission was flown aboard Crew Dragon Endeavour, which previously supported the Crew Dragon Demo-2 and SpaceX Crew-2 missions. [28] From there the spacecraft spent less than a day in transit to the station and dock with Harmony, where they were planned to spend ten days aboard the International Space Station (ISS). [29] Following their time on the ISS, the spacecraft undocked with plans to return to Earth via a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean. Bad weather in the landing zone delayed the return, [30] as result the crew spent 16 days docked to the ISS for a total of 17 days in orbit. [2]
It was revealed that the "zero-g indicator" aboard the first private mission to visit the International Space Station was a toy dog called Caramel, the mascot for the Montreal Children's Hospital Foundation. [31]
During their days aboard the ISS, the private crew conducted more than 25 different research experiments. [32]
The Israeli mission segment is called Rakia, which means "sky" in Hebrew and is also the title of the book published with Ilan Ramon's diary fragments that survived the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. [33]
Connor also carried aboard three items on behalf of the Armstrong Air & Space Museum. With Connor being an Ohio-native, the items included a John Glenn senatorial campaign button, a patch of the Armstrong Air & Space Museum, and a piece of Kapton foil removed from the Apollo 11 Command Module after splashdown. [34]
Michael López-Alegría is an astronaut, test pilot and commercial astronaut with dual nationality, American and Spanish; a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions and one International Space Station mission. He is known for having performed ten spacewalks so far in his career, presently holding the second longest all-time EVA duration record and having the fifth-longest spaceflight of any American at the length of 215 days; this time was spent on board the ISS from September 18, 2006, to April 21, 2007. López-Alegría commanded Axiom-1, the first ever all-private team of commercial astronaut mission to the International Space Station, which launched on April 8, 2022, and spent just over 17 days in Earth's orbit.
Peggy Annette Whitson is an American biochemistry researcher, and astronaut working for Axiom Space. She retired from NASA in 2018, after serving as Chief Astronaut. Over all her missions, Whitson has a total of 665 days in space, more than any other American or woman.
The process of assembling the International Space Station (ISS) has been under way since the 1990s. Zarya, the first ISS module, was launched by a Proton rocket on 20 November 1998. The STS-88 Space Shuttle mission followed two weeks after Zarya was launched, bringing Unity, the first of three node modules, and connecting it to Zarya. This bare 2-module core of the ISS remained uncrewed for the next one and a half years, until in July 2000 the Russian module Zvezda was launched by a Proton rocket, allowing a maximum crew of three astronauts or cosmonauts to be on the ISS permanently.
The International Space Station programme is tied together by a complex set of legal, political and financial agreements between the fifteen nations involved in the project, governing ownership of the various components, rights to crewing and utilisation, and responsibilities for crew rotation and resupply of the International Space Station. It was conceived in September 1993 by the United States and Russia after 1980s plans for separate American (Freedom) and Soviet (Mir-2) space stations failed due to budgetary reasons. These agreements tie together the five space agencies and their respective International Space Station programmes and govern how they interact with each other on a daily basis to maintain station operations, from traffic control of spacecraft to and from the station, to utilisation of space and crew time. In March 2010, the International Space Station Program Managers from each of the five partner agencies were presented with Aviation Week's Laureate Award in the Space category, and the ISS programme was awarded the 2009 Collier Trophy.
Dragon 2 is a class of partially reusable spacecraft developed, manufactured, and operated by American space company SpaceX for flights to the International Space Station (ISS) and private spaceflight missions. The spacecraft, which consists of a reusable space capsule and an expendable trunk module, has two variants: the 4-person Crew Dragon and Cargo Dragon, a replacement for the Dragon 1 cargo capsule. The spacecraft launches atop a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket, and the capsule returns to Earth through splashdown. Since 2020, when Dragon 2 flew its first crewed and uncrewed flights, it has proven to be the most cost-effective spacecraft ever used by NASA.
Axiom Space, Inc., also known as Axiom Space, is an American privately funded space infrastructure developer headquartered in Houston, Texas.
Soyuz MS-20 was a Russian Soyuz spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS) on 8–20 December 2021. Unlike previous Soyuz flights to the ISS, Soyuz MS-20 did not deliver any crew members for an ISS Expedition or serve as a lifeboat for any crew members on board the station. Instead, it was commanded by a single professional cosmonaut and carried two space tourists represented by company Space Adventures, which had executed eight space tourism missions to the ISS in 2001–9. The flight to reach the ISS took six hours.
The Commercial Crew Program (CCP) provides commercially operated crew transportation service to and from the International Space Station (ISS) under contract to NASA, conducting crew rotations between the expeditions of the International Space Station program. American space manufacturer SpaceX began providing service in 2020, using the Crew Dragon spacecraft, and NASA plans to add Boeing when its Boeing Starliner spacecraft becomes operational no earlier than 2025. NASA has contracted for six operational missions from Boeing and fourteen from SpaceX, ensuring sufficient support for ISS through 2030.
Axiom Orbital Segment or Axiom Segment are the planned modular components of the International Space Station (ISS) designed by Houston, Texas-based Axiom Space for commercial space activities. Axiom Space gained initial NASA approval for the venture in January 2020. Axiom Space was later awarded the contract by NASA on February 28, 2020. This orbital station will be separated from the ISS to become a modular space station, Axiom Station, after the ISS is decommissioned.
Eytan Meir Stibbe is an Israeli former fighter pilot, businessman and commercial astronaut.
Mark Pathy is a Canadian businessman, philanthropist and commercial astronaut. He is the CEO of Mavrik, a privately owned Canadian investment company. He is also the chairman of Stingray Group and the former co-CEO of Fednav, a private shipping company co-founded by his great-uncle, Ernest Pathy, who was an immigrant from Hungary.
SpaceX Crew-4 was the Crew Dragon's fourth NASA Commercial Crew operational flight, and its seventh overall crewed orbital flight. The mission launched on 27 April 2022 at 07:52 UTC before docking with the International Space Station (ISS) at 23:37 UTC. It followed shortly after the private Axiom 1 mission to the ISS earlier in the month utilizing SpaceX hardware. Three American (NASA) astronauts and one European (ESA) astronaut were on board the mission.
Axiom Mission 2 was a private crewed spaceflight operated by Axiom Space. Ax-2 was launched on 21 May 2023 on a SpaceX Falcon 9, successfully docking with the International Space Station (ISS) on 22 May. After eight days docked to the ISS, the Dragon crew capsule Freedom undocked and returned to Earth twelve hours later.
SpaceX Crew-6 was the sixth crewed operational NASA Commercial Crew flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the ninth overall crewed orbital flight. The mission launched on 2 March 2023 at 05:34:14 UTC, and it successfully docked to the International Space Station (ISS) on 3 March 2023 at 06:40 UTC. The Crew-6 mission transported four crew members to the International Space Station (ISS). Two NASA astronauts, a United Arab Emirates astronaut, and a Russian cosmonaut were assigned to the mission. The two NASA astronauts are Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg. The cosmonaut, Andrey Fedyaev, was reassigned from Soyuz MS-23. Sultan Al Neyadi was the commander of the United Arab Emirates' mission on the flight.
Crew Dragon Freedom is the fourth operational Crew Dragon reusable spacecraft manufactured and operated by SpaceX. It first launched on 27 April 2022 to the International Space Station (ISS) on the SpaceX Crew-4 mission. It was subsequently used for two private spaceflight missions to the ISS operated by Axiom Space, Axiom Mission 2 in May 2023 and Axiom Mission 3 in January 2024. It most recently launched to space in September 2024 on the SpaceX Crew-9 mission. The capsule was named after the fundamental human right of freedom and the Freedom 7 capsule that took astronaut Alan Shepard on the first human spaceflight from the United States.
Axiom Mission 3 was a private spaceflight to the International Space Station. The flight launched on 18 January 2024, and lasted for 21 days, successfully splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean. It was operated by Axiom Space and used a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. The booster, B1080, had previously flown Axiom-2, among other high-profile missions.
Axiom Mission 4 is a private spaceflight to the International Space Station. The flight will launch no earlier than Spring 2025 and last about 14 days. It will be operated by Axiom Space and use a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Expedition 70 was the 70th long-duration expedition to the International Space Station. The expedition began with the departure of Soyuz MS-23 on 27 September 2023 with Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen taking over the ISS command. It ended with the departure of Soyuz MS-24 on 6 April 2024.