Axiom 1 is the first 100% private mission into space and it will be launched today Everything is ready! For the first time a private crew will be sent to space. Here all the details of the AX1 mission.
By Eduardo Scheffler Zawadzki Edited by Eduardo Scheffler Zawadzki
This article was translated from our Spanish edition.
The mission name is Axiom 1 (AX1) and it is scheduled to launch today, April 8, from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. This is the first private manned mission to the International Space Station (ISS) . For the first time, four astronauts from a private company will board a spacecraft to travel to the ISS and carry out a series of scientific tests related to aging, brain function and cancer.
The astronauts will travel aboard the Dragon , one of SpaceX 's flagship ships, but this time they are not space tourists, but rather a private crew that will carry out a series of 26 scientific and technological experiments over a period of ten days. The four crew members are: Michael López-Alegría an American born in Spain), Larry Connor from the United States, Mark Pathy from Canada and Eytan Stibbe from Israel.
In an interview with Euronews , Kam Ghaffarian , co-founder of the Axiom Space company commented: "This is a historic moment. I think it's the beginning of many principles for commercializing Low Earth Orbit (OTB, the 100 to 1240 mile orbit around the Earth). We are like in the early days of the internet, and we have not even imagined all the possibilities, all the capabilities, that we are going to provide in space…". Regarding the experiments to be carried out in space, he commented: "We already know that when you go to space the aging process speeds up a bit, right? We are going to do clinical research to identify what causes this acceleration and see if by understanding that we can stop the aging process."
Axiom Space, Inc. is a private company based in Houston that was founded in 2016 with the goal of creating the world's first commercial space. As part of the construction process of said station, the company will carry out a series of private research missions supported by NASA and SpaceX . The Axiom 1 mission is just one of them.
In this broadcast you can follow live the launch of the AX1 mission scheduled for April 8 at 15:17 (UTC):
