The first private mission took off for the International Space Station

Three businessmen and a former astronaut took off on Friday aboard a SpaceX rocket on the first completely private mission to the International Space Station (ISS), where they will stay for more than a week.

Liftoff took place at 11:17 a.m. local time (15:17 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida (southeastern United States).

Since 2000, several rookies have traveled to the ISS. Russia last year sent a film crew and a Japanese billionaire. But they all did it aboard Soyuz rockets and accompanied by cosmonauts.

This time it is the Axiom Space company that organized the trip, in collaboration with SpaceX and the POTpaid for the use of their station.

“We are expanding the land borders of commerce into space”, said Bill Nelson, head of the US space agency, shortly before liftoff.

“To say that we are happy is an understatement”declared the director of Axiom Space, Michael Suffredini, at a press conference, emphasizing that it was the completion of six years of work together with the POT already SpaceX.

The commander of the mission, called Ax-1, is the Hispanic-American Michael López-Alegría, a former astronaut who has already been on the ISS.

The other members of the team paid tens of millions of dollars to be part of the mission. The role of the pilot is occupied by the American Larry Connor, owner of a real estate firm.

Also on board are Canadian Mark Pathy, head of an investment firm, and former pilot Eytan Stibbe, co-founder of an investment fund.

Stibbe will be the second Israeli astronaut in history, after Ilan Ramon, who died in 2003 in the explosion of the American space shuttle Columbia on his return from the ISS.

“He was a good friend”Stibbe declared during a press conference last week. “I will continue with the experience that began 19 years ago, focused on observing storms”he added.

scientific experiences

The four men have a very busy agenda, with some 25 experiences to carry out on aging, heart health or stem cells.

“The experiments that took me up there, which come from Canadian universities and research institutes, probably could not have been done in space without this mission”Pathy assured.

For this reason, among others, is that the members of the Ax-1 reject the description of space tourists.

“I think it’s important to differentiate special tourists from private astronauts,” Connor estimated. The first “They spend 10 to 15 hours training (and) five to ten minutes in space (…) We spend between 750 and more than 1,000 hours training.”

Both he and Lopez-Alegria were trained in the Dragon capsule system of SpaceX.

They all learned how to react in case of an emergency situation in the station. But also to carry out tasks of daily life in zero gravity.

Their training is, however, less extensive than that of professional astronauts, who must be able to go into space or repair equipment.

Ax-1 members “will use the bathrooms, but if they break them, our team will fix them,” NASA official Dana Weigel said Thursday.

Future private station

The Dragon capsule is due to dock with the ISS on Saturday around 0745 (1145 GMT).

Upon arrival, the team will visit the station before getting to work.

It is only the sixth time SpaceX it flies with a human crew (the fifth to the ISS). The first flight took place less than two years ago.

Axiom Space concluded an agreement to perform four missions with SpaceXand the POT formally approved the principle of a second, Ax-2.

For Axiom Space it will be the beginning of a stage towards an ambitious goal: the construction of its own space station.

“It is important for us to be able to repeat” these missions “on a smaller scale,” said Michael Suffredini, head of the company.

The first module of the private station is scheduled to be launched in September 2024. The structure will first be attached to the ISS before becoming autonomous when the orbiting laboratory is deactivated, which is expected around 2030.

This low orbit privatization movement is driven by the POTwhich wants to generate income thanks to these private missions and, in the long term, not have to manage the operation of a station but rather rent the services of private structures to concentrate on distant exploration.