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CAPE CANAVERAL — A crew of four, including Turkey’s first astronaut, arrived at the International Space Station early Saturday morning, the latest such mission arranged entirely at commercial expense by Texas-based startup Axiom Space. I will stay there for 2 weeks.
The rendezvous took place about 37 hours after Axiom Quartet lifted off on a rocket ship Thursday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The Crew Dragon ship and the Falcon 9 rocket that carried it into orbit were flown by Elon Musk’s SpaceX under contract with Axiom, as were the first two Axiom missions to the space station since 2022. Supplied, launched and operated.
Once astronauts arrive at the space station, they are placed under the responsibility of NASA’s mission control operations in Houston.
Crew Dragon autonomously docked with the ISS at 5:42 a.m. EDT (10:42 GMT), and the two spacecraft flew approximately 400 kilometers above the South Pacific Ocean, according to a live broadcast from NASA. Ta.
The two were flying in tandem around the Earth at hypersonic speeds of about 17,500 mph (28,200 km/h), merging in orbit.
Once bonding is complete, the sealed passageway between the space station and the crew capsule will be pressurized and checked for leaks before the hatch will be opened, allowing the newly arrived astronauts to be transferred to the orbiting laboratory. It was expected to take about two hours.
Plans call for Axiom 3’s crew to spend about 14 days in microgravity and conduct more than 30 scientific experiments, many of which will focus on the effects of spaceflight on human health and disease. I was guessing.
The multinational team was led by Michael López Alegría, 65, a Spanish-born former NASA astronaut and Axiom executive, who made this his sixth flight to the space station. He also led Axiom’s debut mission in April 2022, the first fully civilian voyage to the space station.
Ax-3’s second-in-command is Col. Walter Villaday, 49, of the Italian Air Force. Rounding out the team are Markus Vandt, a 43-year-old Swedish aviator who heads the European Space Agency, and Turkish Air Force veteran Alper Gezeravci, 44. He was a fighter pilot and the country’s first manned spaceflight.
They will be welcomed by seven members of the space station’s current permanent crew: two Americans from NASA, one astronaut each from Japan and Denmark, and three astronauts from Russia.
Since its founding eight years ago, Houston-based Axiom has developed a business that caters to foreign governments and wealthy private clients seeking to send their own astronauts into orbit. The company charges at least $55 million per seat for its services in arranging, training and equipping customers for spaceflights.
Axiom is also one of the few companies building its own commercial space station, with the aim of eventually replacing the International Space Station, which NASA expects to retire around 2030.
The space station was launched into orbit in 1998 and has been continuously occupied since 2000 under a partnership led by the United States and Russia, including Canada, Japan, and 11 countries belonging to the European Space Agency.