USA SPACE
Miami, Apr 19 (EFE) .- The historic Ax-1 mission, the first completely private to reach the International Space Station (ISS), said goodbye this Tuesday to the astronauts who accompanied it for more than a week and prepares its return to Earth, for which there is no definite date until the “weather conditions” improve.
In a message on its Twitter account, the company in charge of this mission, Axiom Space, reported that the separation of the SpaceX Dragon capsule from an ISS module, scheduled for Tuesday night, was canceled until further notice. “due to unfavorable weather conditions” in the expected area of arrival, off the coast of Florida.
The firm added that together with NASA and SpaceX they are “evaluating the next best opportunity for the return of Ax-1” and its four crew members.
If the undocking had started around 10 p.m. today, US Eastern Time (02:00 GMT on Wednesday), the crew of this mission, led by the Hispanic-American Michael López-Alegría, would have reached the waters of the Atlantic at 3:24 p.m. on Wednesday (19:24 GMT).
In addition to López-Alegría, Ax-1 is also made up of the American Larry Connor, the Canadian Mark Pathy and the Israeli Eytan Stibbe, three wealthy businessmen who, according to US media, each paid 55 million dollars to be part of of this mission.
All of them were honored today in a ceremony broadcast by NASA, in which Commander Tom Marshburn of this space agency and the other six flight engineers that make up Expedition 67 of the ISS thanked the stay of the four Axis astronauts. one.
In addition to Marshburn and Kayla Barron, the ISS is currently hosting Raja Chari, also from NASA; astronaut Matthias Maurer, from the European Space Agency (ESA), and cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Sergey Korsokov and Denis Matveev, from the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
In a conversation with the control room, Marshburn took the microphone to acknowledge the contribution the four astronauts have made to human spaceflight.
For their part, the members of Ax-1 thanked the hosts for guiding them during their 10-day stay at the space laboratory, where they carried out scientific research.
Among others, the four crew members have been using a novel device “for cognitive assessment and training for long-term space mission research,” according to the mission blog.
The postponement of the return of the Ax-1 occurs one day after the four astronauts of the SpaceX Crew-4 mission arrived at the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida (USA), ahead of the launch aboard a Dragon ship heading to the ISS, still scheduled for next Saturday.
They are NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, mission commander, Robert Hines and Jessica Watkins, also from NASA, and Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, from the European Space Agency (ESA).