The four private astronauts will stay on board the ISS for about eight days, during which time they will conduct more than 25 scientific experiments.

It promises to be a special moment this weekend; for the first time, a spacecraft manned entirely by private astronauts will dock at the ISS. The spacecraft in question is a Dragon built by SpaceX. The private astronauts are Spanish-American Michael López-Alegría, American Larry Connor, Canadian Mark Pathy and Israeli Eytan Stibbe. They will join the four astronauts and three cosmonauts already on the ISS this weekend. The four private astronauts will stay in the ISS for about eight days and carry out various experiments there.

Private astronauts

While working on the ISS, the private astronauts may not even be so easily distinguishable from the astronauts who were already on the ISS. Yet there is an important difference; the astronauts now found on the ISS are employed by governmental space agencies such as NASA, ESA and Roscosmos. The private astronauts docking at the ISS this weekend are not employed by a space agency. For a long time it was inconceivable that you could travel to the ISS, But that changed in 2019† Then NASA announced that it wanted to open the ISS to private astronauts. A small side note: they had to provide their own transport and dig deep into their pockets.

AX-1

It now results – almost three years later – in the first mission entirely manned by private astronauts to be called AX-1. AX refers to Axiom Space, a space company that you could see as a kind of travel agency for space travelers. People who would like to travel to the ISS can book here, after which Axiom Space will arrange the transport. For the AX-1 mission, SpaceX will be called upon to supply both the spacecraft (Dragon Endeavour) and the launch vehicle (a Falcon 9). All the private astronauts then have to do is transfer a substantial amount: allegedly about 55 million dollars per person†

That considerable amount will be coughed up without too much effort by three of the four private astronauts (mission commander López-Alegría is employed by the ‘space travel agency’ Axiom Space and you could be seen as the tour leader, he has Connor, Stibbe and Pathy in prepared for their flight to the ISS). For example, Connor is a very successful real estate investor. And Stibbe – who incidentally has Dutch parents – has also grown into a successful and very wealthy entrepreneur after his glorious career as a fighter pilot. And Pathy, as a successful investor and entrepreneur, doesn’t have to pay attention to the little things either.

Launch

The launch of the four private astronauts is scheduled for Friday, just after 5 p.m. (Dutch time) and can be followed via NASA TV. If everything goes according to plan, the astronauts will dock at the ISS the next day around 12:45 PM (Dutch time).

It is an important mission for Axiom Space, which plans to organize many more flights to the ISS. Those flights are in turn a prelude to more; One day, the company hopes to own its own space station orbiting Earth. In this space station (Axiom Space) there is not only room for space tourists, but also for (private) astronauts who do space research for companies or space organizations.