If there is still a lot of work to do for the Starship super-rocket, and other tests to be carried out, the now tested Space X Falcon 9 launcher from Elon Musk’s company, smaller but sufficient to put a capsule into orbit with 4 astronauts, it is now proving to be one of the most reliable ever. And also economical, given that almost all of the rocket and its spacecraft regularly return to the ground and are recovered for a subsequent mission.
Among the now numerous launches of Falcon 9, including those of the well-known swarms of Starlink mini-satellites, there are also the so-called “tourist” crew missions. However, it is perhaps more correct to define them as “private” or “commercial”. This is the case with that game tonight, of the Crew Dragon spacecraft which will have to dock at the International Space Station today around 2.30 pm (Italian time). At the controls of ex NASA veteran Peggy Whitson, on her sixth space mission, who however is not a professional pilot but a biomedical researcher, three “private individuals” departed from Cape Canaveral, one from the United States and two from Saudi Arabia, including a woman . However, due to their professional experiences, they can be considered professional astronauts.
It is the second mission managed and largely financed by the private company “Axiom”, which builds the next station in Earth orbit, after the International Space Station will retire definitively (from 2031). And once again it will be a very Italian base orbiting the Earth, since Thales Alenia Space in Turin has already built and delivered a large part of the pressurized structure of the future next Axiom station. The first module, called AxH1, will act as a habitat for four astronauts and will house instruments both for scientific research and for experimenting with production systems in relative absence of gravity. The module is made to have some windows and a number of hatches to allow new modules to be docked. The private space station includes a minimum of three modules that will first be docked to the current space station, and once integrated they will be able to separate and guarantee the permanence of four astronauts.
The “Axiom-2” mission therefore still makes use of the current International Space Station: the launch with a Space X Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral ramp 39A took place at 3.37 this morning Italian time. Axiom-2 is the second manned space mission of the Texan company, which with this mission aims to strengthen international collaborations: in this case with the Saudi space agency, bringing their first two astronauts into orbit Ali Alqarni, fighter pilot with 2,400 hours a Saudi Air Force flight attendant and F-15 pilot, and Rayyanah Barnawi, who is an oncologist, and has been working in stem cells and tissue reproduction for nine years. John Shoffner, American, is instead an entrepreneur, with a pilot’s license. Peggy Whitson, is an astronaut with many records, with 10 completed spacewalks (for a duration of 60 hours and 21 minutes of work in the vacuum of space), 665 days spent in space and twice commander of the International Space Station, and is now became the first female commander of a private space mission. Today, upon reaching the Space Station, she will join seven long-orbiting astronauts, including three Americans and three Russians. They will remain in orbit for 8 days, and will return to Earth on May 30 with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Now a period of traffic to and from the International Space Station begins: immediately after the return of the Ax-2 it will be the turn of a Cargo Dragon of those that periodically bring supplies to the Station, and then the new set of photovoltaic panels will be sent hoses that are gradually replacing the now end-of-life solar panels, and a small module for scientific research. On July 21, however, the Starliner will be launched, a spacecraft built by Boeing which is planning its first launch with a crew of three astronauts, which after various delays also due to problems during the previous unmanned orbit test, aims to become a medium of space transport between the Earth and the terrestrial orbit, alternative to the Crew Dragons of Space X.