A crew of four astronauts arrived at the International Space Station today, Saturday, on a trip organized by Axiom Space.
This mission, called “Axiom Mission 3” (Ax-3), is the company's third for the space laboratory, and the first in which its three paid seats were sold to national space agencies, rather than to wealthy individuals.
The spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station and docked with it within approximately two hours, according to a live broadcast of the event broadcast by the US Space Agency (NASA).
The Crew Dragon vehicle, mounted on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in the US state of Florida on Thursday.
It arrived at the International Space Station, which floats about 420 kilometers above the Earth, after a journey that took about 36 hours, according to the Axiom Space website.
In addition to Turkish Air Force pilot Albert Gezer Ogi, the mission includes Walter Velade, a colonel in the Italian Air Force who has previously flown to the frontiers of space on a Virgin Galactic spaceplane, and Markus Wandt from Sweden, who represents the agency. European space.
The mission is led by Axiom's chief astronaut, Michael Lopez Alegria, a Spanish and American citizen and a former NASA astronaut.
The Axiom-3 team received a warm welcome from the seven astronauts already on the International Space Station, who are from Japan, Denmark, the United States and Russia.
“We have doubled the number of nationalities on board the space station, from four to eight, which I believe is a great testament to the international cooperation supported by this wonderful space station,” International Space Station Commander Andreas Mogensen said in a live broadcast while welcoming the four arrivals.
Lopez Alegria, commander of Axiom's new mission, added, “The trip up was very exciting. This feeling never changes.”
The new arrivals will spend about two weeks conducting 30 experiments, the goals of which include learning more about the effect of microgravity on the human body and developing industrial processes.
#crew #arrives #space #station