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The first mission with an exclusively private crew will travel to the International Space Station (ISS) this Friday at 17.17 Spanish time, if everything goes according to plan. Behind her is the company Axiom Space, an American company created by the former NASA astronaut of Spanish origin. Michael Lopez-Alegriaand that seeks to become a revolution in space tourism.
To do this, Axiom Space has partnered with SpaceXthe tycoon’s company Elon Musk, who will provide the method of transportation. López-Alegría, who will travel with three other crew members who have paid 55 million dollars (50 million euros) each for her ticket, will travel to space in a Crew Dragon.
They will not be the first: since 2019, this ship has hosted four NASA astronaut missions that have also traveled to the ISS, plus another with a totally civilian crew, called ‘ Inspiration 4 ‘, in which the crew orbited the Earth and then return.
“As a child, I was inspired by NASA’s first manned missions: Mercury, Gemini Y Apolo», López-Alegría himself explained at a previous press conference. “It is a great honor to be involved in this next chapter and I can say that we are ready to fly,” he said. This new mission, named Ax-1will arrive at the ISS this Saturday and will spend nine days in the NASA module, carrying out different types of scientific experiments coordinated by different institutions, such as the Mayo Clinic or the Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation.
a long history
The Crew Dragon, with capacity for four people, is being used by NASA to send its astronauts to the ISS, dispensing with the services of Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The objective of the United States was to be independent in space flights, since it depended on Russian tickets, which cost about 85 million dollars (about 77 million euros). For this reason, NASA granted 4,200 million to Boeing and $2.5 billion to SpaceX in 2014 to separately develop crewable capsule systems to carry astronauts into space from the US.
Finally, Elon Musk’s company was chosen for the first trips, although NASA says it is looking for other contractors to have several vehicles available in the future. For its part, SpaceX is not closed to space tourism, although it has only created four units of the Crew Dragon model, stopping production to focus on its next-generation reusable rocket Starship, with which it wants to send the first humans to Mars.
In fact, a few months ago, the American billionaire Jared Isaacman, promoter of the first civilian mission to space (Inspiration 4), announced a new alliance with SpaceX for three new private missions – the first this year – to test Starship. It seems that the formula for intermediary companies to use SpaceX’s services as a carrier will be one of the keys to future space tourism.
Axiom Space’s future plans
The Ax-1 mission is the first part of a plan by Axiom Space to create the first private space station in history. The idea is that it replaces the ISS at the time it retires (something that will happen in 2030), although at first it will depend on it.
“The plan is build, launch and dock three modules to the ISS. This is easier than building from scratch. Of the first module, the ‘shell’ is being built in Italy. When it is ready, it will be sent to Houston to integrate all the electronics. We hope to launch the module in September 2024. Six months later the second will take off, and another six months later, the next. We will operate alongside the ISS until its end. At that time we will upload a fourth module that will have solar panels, which will provide energy to the entire infrastructure. And we will do the same thing that the ISS is doing now, but privately,” López-Alegría explained to ABC in an interview earlier this year. “We also want to have government agencies as clients, such as NASA or ESA, that can send their astronauts to carry out experiments in microgravity; but also private companies that do their own tests », she pointed out.
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