CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. The first private space station personnel were unveiled on Tuesday: three men each paying $ 55 million to fly a SpaceX rocket.
They will be led by a former NASA astronaut who now works for Axiom Space, the Houston company that arranged the trip for next January.
‘This is the first private flight to the International Space Station. This has never been done before, ”said Axiom CEO and President Mike Suffredini, a former NASA program manager.
While mission commander Michael Lopez-Alegria is well known in space circles, ‘the other three guys are just people who want to go into space, and we’re offering the opportunity,’ Suffredini told The Associated Press.
The first crew will spend eight days at the space station, and it will take one or two days to board a SpaceX Dragon capsule after setting up Cape Canaveral.
Russia has been engaged in tourism outside the world for many years and has been selling rides to the International Space Station since 2001. Other space companies like Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin plan are to take paying customers up and down. flights lasting only a few minutes. These journeys – much more affordable with seats for hundreds of thousands to millions – could begin this year.
Axiom’s first clients include Larry Connor, a real estate and technology entrepreneur from Dayton, Ohio, Canadian financier Mark Pathy and Israeli businessman Eytan Stibbe, a good friend of Israel’s first astronaut Ilan Ramon, who Died in the Columbia crash in 2003.
“These guys are all very involved and do it for the benefit of their communities and countries, and therefore we could not be happier with the composition of the first crew, because of their drive and their interest,” Suffredini said.
Each of these first-paying clients plans to do scientific research in a job, he said, along with educational outreach.
Lopez-Alegria, a former space station resident and space leader, called the group a “collection of pioneers.”
Tom Cruise was named a potential crew member last year; NASA’s top officials have confirmed that he is interested in filming a movie at the space station. There was no word on Tuesday whether Cruise would catch the next Axiom flight. Suffredini declined to comment.
Each of the private astronauts had to pass medical tests and will receive 15 weeks of training, according to Suffredini. The 70-year-old Connor becomes the second oldest person to fly in space, after John Glenn’s shuttle flight in 1998 at the age of 77. He also serves under Lopez-Alegria as the capsule pilot.
Axiom plans about two private missions a year to the space station. It is also working to launch its own live-in compartments to the station from 2024. This section will be detached from the station as soon as it is retired by NASA and the international partners, and becomes its own outpost.