Lopez-Alegria, 63, the Spanish-born Axiom mission commander, is also company's vice president for business development. The four-man Axiom team will be sharing the weightless work environment with seven regular, government-paid ISS crew members - three American astronauts, a German astronaut and three Russian cosmonauts. While the space station has hosted civilian visitors from time to time, the Ax-1 mission will mark the first all-commercial team of astronauts to use ISS for its intended purpose as an orbiting research laboratory. "We're taking commercial business off the face of the Earth and putting it up in space," NASA chief Bill Nelson said before the flight, adding the shift enables his agency to focus more on sending humans back to the moon, to Mars and on other deep space exploration.įriday's launch also stands as SpaceX's sixth human space flight in nearly two years, following four NASA astronaut missions to the space station and the "Inspiration 4" launch in September that sent an all-civilian crew to orbit for the first time.
The mission, representing a partnership among Axiom, SpaceX and NASA, has been touted by all three as a major step in the expansion of commercial space ventures collectively referred to by insiders as the low-Earth orbit economy, or "LEO economy" for short. NASA, besides furnishing the launch site, will assume responsibility for the astronauts once they rendezvous with the space station to undertake eight days of science and biomedical research while in orbit. SpaceX, the rocket company founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk, was directing mission control for the flight from its headquarters near Los Angeles. If all goes as planned, the quartet led by retired NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria will arrive at the space station on Saturday, after a 20-hour-plus flight, and the autonomously operated Crew Dragon will dock with the orbiting outpost some 250 miles (400 km) above the Earth. Launch webcast commentator Kate Tice described the liftoff as "absolutely picture-perfect." One crew member could be heard telling mission control in a radio transmission, "That was a hell of a ride." Meanwhile, the rocket's reusable lower stage, having detached from the rest of the spacecraft, flew itself back to Earth and safely touched down on a landing platform floating on a drone vessel in the Atlantic. Nine minutes after launch, the rocket's upper stage delivered the crew capsule into its preliminary orbit, according to launch commentators.
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION ISS ASTRONAUTS FOR FREE
Register now for FREE unlimited access to RegisterĬameras inside the crew compartment beamed footage of the four men strapped into the pressurized cabin, seated calmly in their helmeted white-and-black flight suits as the rocket soared toward space.
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