<\/strong>platform when it\u2019s ready.<\/p>\nOn board the Ax-1 flight are: American Larry Connor, founder and managing partner of real estate investment firm The Connor Group; Canadian Mark Pathy, CEO of investment and financing company MAVRIK; and Eytan Stibbe, a former Israeli Air Force pilot and founder of investment fund Vital Capital. Their commander is Michael L\u00f3pez-Alegr\u00eda, a veteran NASA astronaut and now chief astronaut for Axiom. The company announced the crew in January 2021, and the crew has spent between 750 and 1,000 hours training for this mission, according to Connor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks for flying Falcon 9,\u201d William Gerstenmaier, vice president of build and flight reliability at SpaceX, told the crew once they had reached orbit. \u201cEnjoy your trip to that wonderful space station in the sky. Do some great research for us. We\u2019ll see you back here on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
L\u00f3pez-Alegr\u00eda thanked the SpaceX team for getting the crew safely to orbit. \u201cThat was a hell of a ride, and we\u2019re looking forward to the next 10 days,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/source><\/picture>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
From L to R: Larry Connor, Michael L\u00f3pez-Alegr\u00eda, Mark Pathy, and Eytan Stibbe in their SpaceX pressure suits<\/em><\/figcaption>Image: Axiom Space<\/cite><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
Axiom has been tightlipped on the financials of this trip, but when the crew was first announced, media reports noted that the astronauts had paid a whopping $55 million to secure their seats on the Crew Dragon. Axiom is also paying an undisclosed sum to NASA to use the space agency\u2019s facilities on the ISS. In 2019, NASA announced that it was opening the US portion of the ISS to more commercial activities. At the time, NASA announced that using the life support systems and toilets would cost $11,250 per night per person.<\/p>\n
The Ax-1 crew will be primarily working on the US portion of the ISS, though they will visit the Russian portion on invitation from the three cosmonauts on board. The four visitors will sleep in various places on the ISS: two will be in the Columbus module, one will sleep inside the Crew Dragon docked at the ISS, and one will be sleeping in an airlock.<\/p>\n
\n
if the toilet happens to break, the Ax-1 astronauts will not be responsible for fixing it<\/q><\/aside>\n<\/div>\nWhile the Ax-1 astronauts did not receive the same intense level of training that NASA astronauts receive before flying to the ISS, they learned basic protocols they\u2019ll need to use for being a guest on the station, such as how to use the food galley and dealing with hygiene in microgravity. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of daily living training, just so that they\u2019re comfortable and know how to kind of operate independently on board,\u201d Dana Weigel, the deputy program manager for the ISS at NASA, said during a press conference ahead of the flight. The Ax-1 team also learned emergency response training in case there\u2019s a major disaster on board the ISS. The wealthy fliers are still considered guests, though \u2014 <\/strong>if the toilet happens to break when they\u2019re on board, the Ax-1 astronauts will not be responsible for fixing it.<\/p>\nOnce their mission is over, the Ax-1 astronauts will load back into the Crew Dragon currently taking them to the ISS, depart the station, and eventually splash down somewhere off the coast of Florida. Once they return, SpaceX is on tap to launch yet another crew to the ISS on April 21st \u2014 its latest launch for NASA called Crew-4, which will send three agency astronauts and a European partner astronaut to the ISS for a six-month stay. SpaceX will then bring home another set of astronauts, part of the Crew-3 mission, who have been on the ISS since November. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a bit of a high-traffic time for the ISS, and it may continue to be busy as more private missions are scheduled to visit the station in the future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Source: https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/4\/8\/23016377\/spacex-crew-dragon-axiom-space-ax-1-successful-launch-iss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Source: This morning, SpaceX successfully launched a new crew of four astronauts to orbit on the company\u2019s Crew Dragon spacecraft \u2014 a group that includes three customers who have reportedly paid millions for their seats. The four private flyers, riding to space with a commercial aerospace company called Axiom Space, are now en route to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,33,36],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-3348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-space","category-spacex","tag-spacex"],"yoast_head":"\n
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