A second commercial flight departs for the International Space Station (ISS). For the first time, a private spacecraft is commanded by a woman, and the first-ever astronaut from Saudi Arabia is on board.
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On the night of May 22, the Falcon 9 launch vehicle with the Crew Dragon ship, which received its own name Freedom, was launched from the spaceport on Merritt Island (Florida). A crew of four astronauts went to the International Space Station (ISS).
Unusual in this mission is primarily its commercial nature: astronauts are now delivered to the ISS not by Roskosmos or NASA (and not even Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which acts here only as a contractor), but by the private company Axiom Space. This is her second space mission. Her first flight to the ISS took place almost exactly a year ago and took place from 8 to 25 April 2022.
At the request of NASA, a professional astronaut who had experience in space flights to the ISS had to lead the team. As a result, Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut, holds the record for the longest stay in space among all Americans and women (665 days), becoming the first ever female commander of a private spacecraft. In 2007, on the ISS, she became the first ever female expedition commander on an orbital station. After leaving NASA in 2018, Witson moved to work at Axiom Space.
In addition to her, as part of the current mission:
- The ship’s pilot, John Shefner, is a businessman and aviator. The only participant who independently paid for the flight into space as part of the mission (the cost was not disclosed);
- Flight specialist number one, Ali al-Qarni is a fighter pilot with the Royal Saudi Air Force;
- Flight Specialist Number Two, Rayana Barnavi, the first female astronaut from Saudi Arabia, is a research laboratory biologist at the King Faisalaw Specialized Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh. Engaged in the study of breast cancer and cancer stem cells.
This is the second flight of Saudi citizens into space, which takes place almost 40 years after the prince of this country and pilot Sultan bin Salman went into orbit on the shuttle Discovery in 1985.
Ryan Barnavi and Ali al-Karni were selected by the Saudi Arabian Space Research Commission and the Saudi government paid for their mission.
Interestingly, an Arab astronaut is now on the ISS – Sultan al-Neyadi from the United Arab Emirates. Under an agreement with NASA, he was trained as an astronaut in the United States, in March 2023 he flew to the ISS on the Crew Dragon as part of an American crew and will spend six months there.
The Axiom Space expedition cannot be called completely touristic: the crew will conduct more than 20 biological, medical, physical-technological and educational experiments, 14 of them under the guidance of Saudi scientists.
So far, the company does not have its own compartments on the ISS, so this time and in the coming years, the crews will use the available scientific equipment and resources. But after 2025, the company will build a commercial segment in the American part of the ISS, which in the future, after the erection of the main station from orbit, will become a separate orbital station.
In addition to flights to low orbit, Axiom Space is involved in the US lunar program as a developer of lunar spacesuits for the Artemis program. The prototype of the Axiom Extravehicular MobilityUnit (AxEMU) suit was presented to the media on March 15 this year.
After the Freedom spacecraft is in near-Earth orbit, the number of cosmonauts and astronauts who have made orbital flights over the entire space era will reach 600 people. And if everything goes according to plan, at the end of May a new record for the simultaneous stay of people in space will be set – 17 people. There will be 11 cosmonauts and astronauts on the ISS, and six more on the Chinese orbital station. Now the record is 14 people. It was installed on September 16, 2021.
It is expected that the Axiom-2 expedition will spend eight days aboard the ISS, after which it will be brought to the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the same Florida.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.