All the true aims of Axiom Space. Report Nyt
A SpaceX launch to the International Space Station led by the company Axiom Space illustrates how traditional and private space efforts are blending. The New York Times report
A private mission launched four astronauts to the International Space Station. The New York Times writes.
Unlike previous flights, none of the passengers are wealthy space tourists who paid for their own trip to orbit. In contrast, three of the crew members are sponsored by their respective nations: Italy, Sweden and Turkey. For Turkey, the crew member is the country's first astronaut.
The flight, performed by Houston-based Axiom Space, is part of a new era in which nations no longer have to build their own rockets and spacecraft to undertake a human spaceflight program. Now they can simply purchase flights from a commercial company, almost like a plane ticket.
The astronauts were aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket, launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After a day's delay for further vehicle checks, the countdown continued smoothly and the rocket's engines ignited at 4:49 pm Eastern time.
THE THIRD AXIOM SPACE MISSION
The private astronaut mission, Ax-3, is the third for Axiom, which is also developing its own space station and producing new spacesuits for NASA. It leased this rocket from SpaceX and has been sending paying customers for two-week stays on the International Space Station since 2022.
NASA'S OPENING OF THE ISS TO PRIVATE PEOPLE
In 2019, NASA opened its part of the space station to visitors, in a reversal from previous policies. (Russia has hosted a number of space tourists on the International Space Station since 2001.)
THE OPPORTUNITY FOR ESA
For the European Space Agency (ESA) and its 22 nations, commercial flights like Axiom's offer a way to get more Europeans into space and underline the mix of traditional and commercial space programs.
ESA currently pays 8.3% of the space station's costs and therefore its astronauts receive a fraction of the six-month mission. This currently corresponds to just four flights between now and the space station's retirement in 2030.
“We don't have that many flights, so we can't give every member state an astronaut,” said Frank De Winne, head of ESA's astronaut office. "It's impossible".
But Marcus Wandt, the Swedish astronaut of the Axiom flight, reached the International Space Station on a commercial flight.
“If Axiom didn't have this option available, it wouldn't be happening now,” Wandt said during a press conference last week. Wandt, a fighter and test pilot, applied to become an astronaut at ESA a couple of years ago. Among 22,500 candidates, he reached the final selection phase, but he was not one of the five that ESA chose as new full-time astronauts.
Instead, he was appointed “backup” astronaut. These are unpaid positions, but reserve astronauts are entitled to training and a mission into space if a commercial opportunity arises and their country is willing to pay the price.
“That's why we created the reserve corps,” De Winne said.
THE CREW MEMBERS OF THE AX-3
The Ax-3 crew members are not the first government astronauts to pay for their trip to orbit in this way.
The United Arab Emirates purchased a flight on a Russian Soyuz rocket for an eight-day stay on the International Space Station in 2019 for one of its astronauts, Hazzaa Al-Mansoori. Axiom Space has arranged a six-month stay on the space station for a second Emirati astronaut, Sultan Alneyadi, in 2023. Saudi Arabia also transported two astronauts to the International Space Station on its final Axiom flight last year.
In March, Swedish officials learned that Axiom had an opening on this private astronaut mission. “If we could make a quick decision, this would be a possibility for us,” said Anna Rathsman, director general of the Swedish National Space Agency.
“We realized that this kind of opportunity doesn't happen often,” said Mats Persson, Sweden's minister for higher education, research and space. “And when we had it, we took it.”
Sweden, with financial contributions from the space agency, the Swedish Armed Forces and companies like Saab, paid nearly 450 million Swedish kronor, or about $43 million, for Wandt to go into space. That's less than the $55 million Axiom initially said in 2018 it would charge for a seat. (Axiom now declines to disclose the cost.)
With the agreement in place, Wandt was promoted from reserve astronaut to project astronaut – a one-year paid position for this mission. The work he will conduct on the space station includes an experiment that identifies the effects of weightlessness on stem cells and how architectural environments in space influence astronauts' physical and mental well-being.
THE FUTURE FLIGHTS OF AXIOM SPACE
Other ESA members have also signed up for future Axiom flights. Similar to what Sweden did for Wandt, Poland has an astronaut, Slawosz Uznanski, who is another of ESA's reserve astronauts, lined up for a future Axiom flight. The UK Space Agency has also signed a deal with Axiom to put its astronauts into orbit.
In this flight, the other crew members are Alper Gezeravci, a fighter pilot of the Turkish Air Force, and Walter Villadei, a colonel of the Italian Air Force.
As Turkey's first astronaut, Gezeravci hopes to be an inspiration to his country's future generations.
“This spaceflight is not a destination of our journey,” he said during the crew's press conference. “This is just the beginning of our journey.”
THE ITALIAN VILLADEI ON BOARD OF AX-3
The Italian Villadei, pilot of the mission, has already been in space, but only for a few minutes. He was one of three members of the Italian Air Force who carried out a Virgin Galactic suborbital flight in June last year, conducting several experiments in biomedicine, fluid dynamics and materials science.
Although Italy is also a member of ESA, the trip was organized by the Italian Air Force and not by the country's space agency.
A FORMER NASA ASTRONAUT IS COMMANDING THE MISSION
The mission commander is Michael López-Alegría, former NASA astronaut and now chief astronaut of Axiom. NASA requires that private astronaut missions be led by a former NASA astronaut.
Other nations have also pursued the commercial approach to human spaceflight, and the idea is not new.
THE COMMERCIAL APPROACH TO SPACE FLIGHT
More than a decade ago, Robert Bigelow, who made his fortune in real estate, including the Budget Suites of America hotel chain, was planning to launch private resorts that would be rented to paying customers, mostly nations, which he called “sovereign customers.”
Bigelow's company, Bigelow Aerospace, has signed memorandums of understanding with countries including the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, Australia and Great Britain.
Due to delays in other aerospace companies' development of spacecraft that would carry people to and from space stations, Bigelow's plans never got off the ground.
However, Michael Gold, director of Bigelow Aerospace's Washington office at the time, said Bigelow's early efforts helped create the space for what Axiom is doing now.
Gold said at the time a foreign space tourist would have to be accompanied by someone from the U.S. Defense Technology Security Administration to ensure the tourist did not learn about regulated aerospace technologies.
Ultimately, federal officials decided it wasn't necessary.
“This is a great example of how the early work we did at Bigelow Aerospace pioneered the creation of the ecosystem that Axiom Space and all other companies are taking advantage of today,” said Gold, now Chief Growth Officer at Redwire, a space infrastructure company.
(Excerpt from the foreign press review by Epr Comunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/con-la-terza-missione-di-axiom-space-prosegue-la-nuova-era-del-volo-spaziale/ on Mon, 29 Jan 2024 06:39:03 +0000.