There have often been individual guests on the ISS space station, but now a whole private crew has started there. The four participants will remain on the ISS for around a week.
Cape Canaveral – The first private mission to the International Space Station ISS has started. The four participants in the “Ax-1” mission took off from Cape Canaveral in the US state of Florida on Friday using a “Falcon 9” rocket in a “Crew Dragon” space capsule, as live images showed.
Nasa boss Bill Nelson spoke of a “historic start” and a “new era of manned space flight”. The start had previously been postponed several times.
On Saturday, the first all-private crew – consisting of Spanish-American astronaut Michael López-Alegría, US entrepreneur Larry Connor, Israeli entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe and Canadian investor Mark Pathy – was expected at the ISS.
Meeting with Matthias Maurer
The whole thing is organized by the private space company Axiom in cooperation with the US space agency Nasa and Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. There have been individual space tourists on the ISS several times, but the so-called “Ax-1” mission is the first completely private crew.
The four Axiom planes are to remain on the ISS for around a week and carry out scientific experiments there. Among other things, they will also meet the German astronaut Matthias Maurer, who has been on the ISS since November and is scheduled to stay until the end of April. According to media reports, the passengers each paid around 55 million dollars (about 50 million euros) for the flight. dpa
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