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The crew, made up of 4 civilians, will stay on board the International Space Station for 8 days and will carry out various experiments on site, within the American part of the station.
Private space company SpaceX will send a new mission to the International Space Station today. Until then, nothing new under the sun, the company has been collaborating for a while now with NASA to send astronauts to the ISS or bring them back to Earth, but this launch will be different from the others since its crew will be made up of 100% civilians. A mission carried out with the commercial aerospace company Axiom Space.
An expensive trip
Like the expeditions offered by Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin, this journey beyond land borders is not within everyone’s reach since three of the four civilian participants in this mission have paid a colossal sum ($55 million ) to board the Crew Dragon capsule bound for the ISS.
Among the crew members are Canadian investor Mark Pathy, American real estate investor Larry Connor and former Israeli Air Force pilot Eytan Stibb. The fourth civilian is not as inexperienced as the other three since it is Michael Lopez-Stibbe, a former NASA astronaut who has 4 space missions to his name. He is also Vice President of Axiom.
Advent of civilian spaceflight
Long reserved for government-sponsored travel, space has recently opened up to expeditions by private companies, as well as to amateur astronauts. A trend that has been boosted by NASA’s openness to the idea of commercial exploitation of the ISS, because if the first space tourists are not new, those sent by private companies are more recent. The year 2021 was indeed marked by the first tourist space flights carried out by private space companies.
In the years to come, this type of travel is set to develop. A very large number of tickets giving the right to such an experience have already been sold and the offers are diversifying. After the flights of a few minutes at the frontier with space, SpaceX organized a stay of several days for amateur astronauts and, today, the company is preparing to ensure a 100% civilian trip to the ISS. But space tourism is set to develop in ways other than simple expeditions.
Axiom has the ambition to develop several commercial space stations and to “make space more accessible to everyone” – as long as your pockets are deep.
The SpaceX-led mission “really represents the first step where a group of individuals who want to do something meaningful in low Earth orbit – who are not members of a government – can seize this opportunity,” said Mike Suffredini, CEO of Axiom.
To board the ISS, amateur astronauts had to undergo extensive training of 750 to 1000 hours, depending on their role. We are far from the 10 to 15 hours imposed on those who stayed a few minutes in space. The members of the Ax-1 crew will indeed have to carry out a handful of experiments on board the ISS during their 8-day stay, hence the more substantial training.