The spaceflight is a watershed moment for commercial space operations, and the charter company says a first step towards building its own commercial space station.
Three multimillionaire businessmen have docked and entered the International Space Station in what has been hailed as a milestone for commercial space exploration. Alongside a retired NASA astronaut, the men launched from Florida on Friday as part of a private SpaceX launch. The four of them were welcomed onboard the ISS on Saturday by the crew there as NASA joins Russia in hosting guests at the world’s most expensive tourist destination. The American, Canadian and Israeli businessmen each paid $55m (£42m) for the rocket ride and accommodation. The launch, codenamed Ax-1, was commissioned by Axiom Space, a US space infrastructure developer. Michael López-Alegría, the former NASA astronaut who escorted the men, is the company’s vice president of business development. The launch was the sixth human spaceflight conducted by SpaceX and the first private launch that it has docked with the ISS. The four men say they are not tourists as they will be conducting commercial scientific research while on board, including on “self-assembling technology for satellites and future space habitats, cancer stem cell study, and air purification”. Axiom describes the mission as its first step towards building a commercial space station, which NASA expects to take off over the next few years, ultimately leading to pulling the ISS out of the sky.
