Axiom-1 launch - live: First entirely private mission to ISS launches on SpaceX rocket
Axiom-1, the first all-private citizen mission to the International Space Station, is poised to take off Friday
Axiom-1 lifts off
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Axiom-1, the first all private mission to the International Station, lifted off as scheduled Friday morning.
The four Axiom-1 crew members, all private citizens — though one is a former Nasa astronaut — blasted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft at 11:17 a.m. Eastern from Kennedy Space Center. After a 20.5 hour flight to rendezvous with the space station, they will spend eight days on the ISS.
Axiom Space is developing a module it hopes to add to the ISS sometime in 2024 to serve as a destination for paying customers who wish to fly in space. Over time, the company plans to add on further modules, eventually detaching the complex from the ISS to form a free-flying commercial space station before the ISS’s retirement at the end of the 2020s.
Check back here for continuing live coverage of the Axiom-1 launch and mission.
Live coverage of Axiom-1 arriving at the ISS
For those who missed the live stream of the Axiom-1 launch on Friday, Saturday morning will offer the opportunity to watch the first all-private crew to the space station arrive at their orbital home for the next week.
The Axiom-1 Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavor, will dock with the ISS at 7:45 am Eastern, and Nasa will begin live coverage of the docking and reception at 5:30 a.m. Eastern on Saturday. Axiom space will also offer a live feed on its website.
The Axiom crew will be greeted by ISS Expedition 67, which consists of Russian Cosmonauts April 08, 2022
RELEASE 22-033
Axiom Private Astronauts Headed to International Space Station
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft launches Friday, April 8, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft is launched on Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) to the International Space Station with Commander Michael López-Alegría of Spain and the United States, Pilot Larry Connor of the United States, and Mission Specialists Eytan Stibbe of Israel, and Mark Pathy of Canada aboard, Friday, April 8, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Credits: NASA/Joel Kowsky
Four private astronauts are in orbit following the successful launch of Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1), the first all private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. Axiom Space astronauts lifted off at 11:17 a.m. EDT on Friday, April 8, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket propelled the Dragon Endeavour spacecraft carrying Ax-1 crew members Michael López-Alegría, Larry Connor, Mark Pathy, and Eytan Stibbe into orbit. The crew will spend more than a week conducting scientific research, outreach, and commercial activities on the space station.
“What a historic launch! Thank you to the dedicated teams at NASA who have worked tirelessly to make this mission a reality,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. “NASA’s partnership with industry through the commercial cargo and crew programs has led our nation to this new era in human spaceflight — one with limitless potential. Congratulations to Axiom, SpaceX, and the Axiom-1 crew for making this first private mission to the International Space Station a reality.”
Beginning at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday, April 9, NASA will provide live coverage of the Endeavour docking, hatch opening, and a ceremony to welcome the crew. The events will run on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.
Endeavor will autonomously dock to the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module around 7:45 a.m. The welcome ceremony is expected to start shortly after the Dragon hatch opens at about 9:30 a.m. Saturday. Live mission coverage will end with the conclusion of the ceremony. The mission also will be covered by Axiom on its website.
Once aboard the station, the Axiom crew will be welcomed by Expedition 67 crew members, including NASA astronauts Thomas Marshburn, Raja Chari, and Kayla Barron, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Matthias Maurer, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Sergey Korsokov, and Denis Matveev, Nasa astronauts , Raja Chari, Kayla Barron, and Thomas Marshburn, as well as European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer.
Now that Axiom-1 has launched and cleared launch complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center, Nasa’s attention will turn to the next government mission to the ISS.
Nasa’s Crew-4 mission was scheduled to lift off on 20 April, but Nasa’s chief of human spaceflight Kathy Leuders said Tuesday that the launch would be bumped to 21 or 23 April to make space for Axiom-1.
Like Axiom-1, Crew-4 will launch aboard a SpaceX Falon 9 rocket using a Crew Dragon spacecraft, but the mission’s crew consistent entirely of active Nasa astronauts.
The future of commerical space stations
Commercial space stations are also a big part of Nasa’s vision for the future.
The ISS, continuously crewed and operating since 2000, is slated for retirement — and controlled deorbiting — by sometime in 2030.
And as Nasa administrator Bill Nelson has put it on numerous occasions, the space agency wnats to get out of the low Earth orbit space station business.
“We've got initiatives out there in private industry right now to build a commercial space station,” he said in an interview just before the Axiom-1 launch Friday morning.
In 2020, Nasa chose Axiom Space as part of its Commercial Destinations program, and Axiom has since been developing a module to add to the ISS.
On 2 December, 2021, Nasa announced three additional contracts with private companies worth $415.6 million for the development of commercial space stations. Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin, American aerospace giant Northrup Grumman, and a company called Nanowracks are all in the mix.
Mr Nelson has stated that Nasa’s goal is to lease space aboard commercial space stations as needed, and focus the space agency’s resources and deep space exploration on the Moon and Mars.
Nasa’s commercial future
Nasa’s chief of human spaceflight Kathy Leuders noted on Twitter Friday that commercial astronauts are a big part of the space agency’s vision of the future. Friday’s launch is a realization of where Nasa hoped to end up when it launched the Commercial Crew program after the retirement of the Space Shuttle.
Stoking interested
Elysia Segal, a public programs producer at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York, shared the reactions of a classroom full of her students to the Axiom-1 launch on Twitter Friday.
The launch activities at Kennedy Space Center have long passed, but the Axiom-1 crew have a long day head of them: They won’t dock with the ISS until 7:45 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday, 9 April.
And once docked with the Harmony module of the ISS, the four Axiom crewmembers will have to get to work before they can sleep. First will come a safety briefing, particular important since only mission commander Michael López-Alegría has flown aboard the ISS before, and then the crew most unload and stow cargo before hitting the hay.
We have lift off
Axiom-1 is in the air.
Axiom-1 lifts off
Cryogenic
Steam is now visible coming off the Falcon 9 rocket as the ground team finishing loading liquid oxygen into the rocket with just more than five minutes to launch.
Falcon 9 liquid oxygen loading
T-minus 10 minutes
Axiom-1 will launch in about 10 minutes at 11:17 a.m. Eastern time.
It’s about two minutes to space for the crew atop the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
Once in orbit, it’s almost a full day —around 20 hours — before the Crew Dragon spacecraft can rendezvous with the ISS, dock, and the crew can disembark for their eight day stay on the space station.
Axiom-1 science
The four crew of Axiom-1 won’t be building a space station — Axiom has yet to install its first module on the ISS — but their trip isn’t just a vacation either. The spacecraft is also carrying a handful of science experiments the crew will setup and run during their eight days about the ISS.
The Tessellated Electromagnetic Space Structures for the Exploration of Reconfigurable, Adaptive, Environments, or TESSERAE Ax-1, will study the ability of autonomous, robotic tiles to swarm in microgravity.
The Axiom-1 commercial astronauts will also work on culturing model cancer tumors in microgravity.
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