by CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The first all-private manned mission to the International Space Station is ready for flight, mission leaders announced today (April 7).
Tomorrow (April 8), a crew of four, led by a former NASA astronaut, will embark on a 10-day mission to the space station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket. Your mission is Ax-1, the first manned flight for Texas-based aerospace company Axiom Space.
“This is an historic event and we are very pleased to be here to report our readiness and readiness to proceed with a launch tomorrow,” said Angela Hart, NASA’s Commercial LEO (Low Earth Orbit) program manager, during a preliminary briefing . Start press conference today.
Ax-1 is scheduled to launch at 11:17 am EDT (1517 GMT) from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center here on Florida’s Space Coast. You can watch live here on Space.com or directly via SpaceX’s YouTube page (opens in new tab); live broadcast begins at approximately 7:55 am EDT (1155 GMT).
Live Updates: Private Ax-1 mission to the space station
Former NASA astronaut and current Axiom employee Michael López-Alegría will command the Ax-1 mission. He is accompanied by three paying customers: pilot Larry Connor and mission specialists Eytan Stibbe and Mark Pathy. The quartet will depart tomorrow for a 10-day mission that will span eight days aboard the International Space Station.
Ax-1 is scheduled to dock at the space station’s zenith port Node 2 on Saturday (April 9).
While storms have waxed and waned around the Space Coast today, the weather is expected to improve before tomorrow’s launch, Brian Cizek, a launch weather officer with the US Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron, said during today’s briefing.
“The good news is that the weather tomorrow and throughout the weekend will be much better than the weather we saw today,” said Cizek. While there were some thunderstorms today, “there’s going to be high pressure tomorrow and all weekend and looking much better weather wise here at Kennedy Space Center,” he added.
There are still some concerns about the wind but there is only a 10% chance of breaching the weather conditions at the scheduled start time tomorrow.
Ax-1 is a private astronaut mission, but team members have stressed that it is not a “space tourism” flight or elaborate jaunt of any kind. According to the mission team, the crew trained extensively for Ax-1. They have practiced how to perform personal hygiene and other day-to-day activities in space, as well as on-station emergency response, maintenance and repair activities, public relations and documentation, and scientific experiments. The crew has said they will bring over 25 different science experiments to work on during their eight-day station stay.
“They want to be the best possible private astronauts imaginable, and they trained that way,” Derek Hassmann, operations director at Axiom Space, told Space.com during the press conference. “They are very well prepared, they understand where they fit in the big scheme of things. They want to be good house guests, if you will.”
Hassmann added that López-Alegría’s extensive experience as a NASA astronaut and as space station commander will enable him to guide his crew members and assist them in minimizing “disruption” to the station’s existing crew.
“Our aim was really to set the bar very high and show everyone involved around the world that this is a realistic thing – that they can have faith that it can have an impact,” added Hassmann.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and on Facebook.
