All-private SpaceX astronaut mission to return home from the ISS
The four crew members — Michael Lopez-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut turned Axiom employee who is commanding the mission; Israeli businessman Eytan Stibbe; Canadian investor Mark Pathy; and Ohio-based real estate magnate Larry Connor — are slated to leave the space station aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on Tuesday around 10:00 pm ET.
The three paying customers completed about 15 weeks of training before the flight. Though they do not have to worry about piloting their spacecraft, as the Crew Dragon is fully autonomous, they went through extensive studying of the capsule’s design, prepared for all sorts of emergency scenarios, and completed zero-gravity test flights to prepare them for space, much as professional astronauts do.
But AX-1 is the first mission with a crew entirely comprised of private citizens with no active members of a government astronaut corps onboard during the trip to and from the ISS. It’s also the first time private citizens have traveled to the ISS on a US-made spacecraft.
The mission is made possible by very close coordination among Axiom, SpaceX and NASA, since the ISS is government-funded and operated.
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