Axiom Space bought seats on a SpaceX rocket to be NASA’s guests in orbit as the agency extends efforts to commercialize spaceflight.
On Friday, a retired NASA astronaut and three paying customers set off on a journey to the International Space Station. The mission is the first to go to the space station on which all of the passengers are private citizens, and it is the first time that NASA has collaborated in arranging a space tourism visit. The flight marked a pivotal moment in efforts to spur space travel by commercial enterprises, NASA officials said. “This is a really, really big milestone for us in our overall campaign to try to help foster a commercial low-Earth-orbit economy,” Dana Weigel, the deputy program manager for the space station at NASA, said during a news conference after the launch. But the mission also highlighted that most of the customers for trips to orbit will be the very wealthy in the near-term. Axiom Space of Houston acted as the tour operator, selling seats for the 10-day trip, including eight days aboard the station, for $55 million each. Axiom hired SpaceX to provide the transportation — a Falcon 9 rocket with a Crew Dragon capsule, the same system that takes NASA astronauts to and from the station. At 11:17 a.m. Eastern time, the mission, called Axiom-1, lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida into clear blue skies following a smooth countdown. “Welcome to space,” a SpaceX official said to the Axiom-1 crew soon after the capsule detached from the second stage of the rocket. “Thanks for flying Falcon 9. You guys enjoy your trip to that wonderful space station in the sky.” The customers on the Axiom-1 mission are Larry Connor, managing partner of the Connor Group, a firm in Dayton, Ohio, that owns and operates luxury apartments; Mark Pathy, chief executive of Mavrik Corporation, a Canadian investment company; and Eytan Stibbe, an investor and former Israeli Air Force pilot. They will be led to the space station by Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut who is now a vice president at Axiom and the Ax-1 mission’s commander. “What a ride!” Mr. López-Alegría reported on Twitter from orbit. They are scheduled to dock at the space station early Saturday. Although the Kennedy Space Center is part of NASA, NASA had almost no role in the launch or the orbital ride. The agency’s officials were happy about that as they look to a future when they can simply buy services like room aboard a space station from commercial vendors. The International Space Station, about as long as a football field, is a technological marvel, but one that costs NASA about $1.3 billion a year to operate. Although NASA wants to extend the lifetime of the current station to 2030, it hopes that much less expensive commercial space stations are in orbit by then. For NASA, that means learning how to collaborate with private enterprise in orbit including hosting space tourists, while Axiom and other companies have to figure out how to build a profitable off-planet business.
