Astronaut Miguel López-Alegra takes off towards the International Space Station on a private mission

2024-01-19 00:22:48

AP Cabo Caaveral (Florida)

Updated Thursday, January 18, 2024 – 23:22

The Spanish astronaut Miguel López-Alegra, 65, along with the first Turkish astronaut, a Swede and an Italian, took off this Thursday towards the International Space Station on a chartered SpaceX flight.

The Falcon rocket took off from NASA Kennedy Space Center late in the afternoon, transporting the four men, all of them with experience as military pilots and representatives of their countries of origin.

Its capsule should arrive at the space station on Saturday. They will spend two weeks conducting experiments, chatting with schoolchildren, and enjoying the views of the city. Tierra, before returning home.

The trip will cost Sweden, Turkey and Italy $55 million or more. That is the approximate price per person for the trip, the third of its kind organized by the travel company. Houston Axiom Space with NASA and SpaceX. Russia has been receiving paying visitors to the space station for more than two decades; NASA didn’t do it until two years ago.

Turkish Alper Gezeravci, former fighter pilot and captain of Turkish Airlines, is the first person from his country to travel by rocket to space. He noted that Turkey just celebrated its centenary and that, until now, the nation’s view of the sky was limited to “what we can see with our own eyes.”

“Now this mission is pulling back that curtain all the way,” he told reporters before the flight. “This is the beginning of our next centenary.”

Swede Marcus Wandt, a former fighter pilot and test pilot for the Swedish Airplane Corp. who was chosen as a reserve astronaut by the European Space Agency in 2022, and Italian Air Force Colonel Walter Villadei, who flew to the edge of space on last summer with Virgin Galactic.

López-Alegra declared during a press conference on January 11, the research they are going to do will help understand the effects of lack of gravity on the human body or the mechanisms behind certain diseases such as cancer, and include stem cell research.