What just a few years ago seemed completely impossible seems to be slowly becoming an increasingly recurrent reality. And it is that this weekend SpaceX and Axiom Space have successfully launched the first spaceflight with a totally private crew bound for the International Space Station (ISS) paving the way for the future normalization of space travel.
Although at the moment this milestone and pastime is still limited to the few who can afford it, with prices still derisory, having had to spend nothing less than 55 million dollars per head each of the participants.
The mission, which represents a partnership between Axiom, SpaceX and NASA, has been touted by all three as an important step in the expansion of commercial space enterprises collectively referred to by experts as the low-Earth orbit economy or LEO economy. “We’re taking commercial businesses off the face of the Earth and into space”, declared Bill Nelson, head of NASA, before the flight.
Thus, this mission has had a crew made up of the Hispanic-American Michael López-Alegría, former NASA astronaut and flight commander; the American Larry Connor, founder of the real estate investment firm Connor Group; Israeli Eytan Stibbe, former fighter pilot and founder of the Vital Capital investment fund; and the Canadian Mark Pathy, executive director of the investment and financing company Mavrik.
Although it should be noted that, even if they are not professional astronauts, this crew had to undergo hundreds of hours of specialized training provided by SpaceX and Axiom Space to be able to participate in this mission, learning basic protocols such as the use of the food kitchen, practicing personal hygiene in micro-gravity, and even training in emergency response in case something goes wrong to aboard the ISS.
Following their successful launch on Friday, the four astronauts launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, confirming their arrival at the ISS yesterdaymaking it the first fully private manned spaceflight mission to the station.
Nine minutes after launch, the rocket’s upper stage placed the crew capsule into its preliminary orbit, according to launch commentators. Meanwhile, the rocket’s reusable lower stage, having been separated from the rest of the spacecraft, flew back to Earth and landed safely on a landing pad floating on an unmanned ship in the Atlantic.
The crew will stay for eight days on the American segment of the ISS, where they will perform more than 25 different research experiments. After this, they will depart on the same Crew Dragon spacecraft that currently takes them to the ISS and land in the Atlantic Ocean.
