SpaceX continues to prepare for its next astronaut mission.
The flight, known as Ax-3, is scheduled to lift off from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 17, sending four people to the International Space Station (ISS).
The Dragon capsule that will transport these people to the orbiting lab has arrived at the hangar on Pad 39A, SpaceX announced today (January 12). Post to X A photo of a spaceship in a new environment was posted.
Related: Axiom Space selects Ax-3 astronauts for SpaceX’s ISS mission
Ax-3 is the third mission to the ISS organized by Houston company Axiom Space. Like its two predecessors, which launched in April 2022 and May 2023, Ax-3 will employ SpaceX hardware: a Falcon 9 rocket and a Dragon capsule.
The Ax-3 crew consists of former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría; Col. Walter Villaday of the Italian Air Force also flew into suborbital space on Virgin Galactic in June 2023. Marcus Want of the European Space Agency. Alper Gezeravci becomes the first Turkish citizen to reach space.
López-Alegría, who currently works for Axiom, will lead this mission. (NASA requires that all private crewed missions to the ISS be led by former astronauts.) He is a dual Spanish-American citizen who gives Ax-3 an unprecedented international It gives the atmosphere.
“The Ax-3 mission will be transformative as it will foster partnerships outside the ISS structure and position European countries as pioneers in an emerging commercial space industry,” López-Alegría said in the paper. Stated. Axiomatic Statement for September 2023when the crew was announced.
Ax-3 will be SpaceX’s 12th astronaut mission. In addition to the two Axiom flights, Elon Musk’s company has launched eight crewed missions for NASA (including a Demo 2 test flight in 2020) and the commercial Inspiration 4 effort. All of these missions visited the ISS, except for Inspiration 4, where Dragon flew freely in orbit around Earth.
One of SpaceX’s missions remains in the orbiting laboratory. The four-seater Crew 7 was launched last August and is scheduled to return to Earth next month.