This is the first-ever fully private flight to the International Space Station. Friday April 8 at 5:17 p.m. French time, a Falcon rocket will leave Earth from Florida with 4 men on board. If all goes well the crew of Axiom Space’s Ax-1 mission will arrive Saturday morning aboard the International Space Station (ISS), to stay there for eight days.
Of these four new passengers, Michael López-Alegría, NASA veteran, gone private represents the only professional astronaut. The others, Larry Connor, Mark Pathy and Eytan Stibbe are businessmen. They offered themselves this trip for the modest sum of 50 million euros each, according to the figure given by the Washington Post. On board they will carry out a certain number of scientific experiments but will also spend time simply opening their eyes from the famous Cupola, this glass wall which offers an unobstructed view of the Earth.
Tea @Axiom_Space #Ax1 mission is less than one day from launching to the station as the Exp 67 crew gears up for a pair of April spacewalks. https://t.co/XVRcADbFhO
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) April 7, 2022
The mission is initiated by the private American company Axiom, which plans to eventually develop its own station. Within a decade, the current ISS will be abandoned, de-orbited and sent into the atmosphere to disintegrate. This leaves, on the western side, room for a private station inspired by the current one. The first modules that will make it up, a sort of metal cylinder about ten meters long and four meters in diameter, are currently under construction at Thalès Alenia Space in a factory in Turin. “The Axiom elements represent a transition between the current state-run station, details Anna Maria Piras the manager of this program, and a future use of this part of Earth’s orbit as a place accessible to a greater number of users, in particular those coming from the private sector.”
“The elements will first be hooked up to the rest of the ISS to provide it with additional space. Around 2026, they will separate to form a fully autonomous, commercial low-orbit station.”
Anna Maria Piras, program manager
For the chic side, and to attract private customers, Axiom took out the silverware and entrusted the interior design of these modules to French designer Philippe Starck. “I created a very pleasant padded egg that isolates them from noise, shocks and in which they can have total freedom of configurationsexplains the famous designer. If they need to put a screen in front of them, they do. When they need a net to put things in to prevent it from flying, they do it. It is a soft and very human environment and which is totally adapted to the absence of gravity. They were extremely satisfied with the project.“
If everything works on time, the first module of this future space station will leave the earth in 2024.