Thanks to Axiom for making this dream come true.”Ĭontact and soft capture confirmed! Axiom’s commercial crew - Mike López-Alegría, Larry Connor, Eytan Stibbe, and Mark Pathy - have arrived at the International Space Station, completing a 21-hour transit from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “I’m thrilled and honored to be up here,” Connor said. The Ax-1 mission marks his fourth visit to the ISS, after previous flights on space shuttles and Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.ĭuring the welcoming ceremony, López-Alegría pinned honorary astronaut wings on Connor, Stibbe, and Pathy from the Association of Space Explorers, an organization of astronauts and cosmonauts who have completed at least one orbit of the Earth. “I can’t even begin to describe how fun its been to be in Dragon for the last day … watching these guys light up (as they looked out the window),” López-Alegría in a welcoming ceremony soon after entering the station. With the Ax-1 crew members safely inside the station, there are now 11 people living and working on the complex, including five Americans, three Russians, one German, one Canadian, and one Israeli space flier. SpaceX’s Dragon Endeavour spacecraft, making its third flight into space, completed the 21-hour pursuit of the space station in an automated mode. López-Alegría and his crewmates launched Friday from the Kennedy Space Center. The other crew members for the Axiom mission are pilot Larry Connor and mission specialists Eytan Stibbe and Mark Pathy, three investors and entrepreneurs who paid for their rides. Michael López-Alegría, commander of the mission, is commanding the Ax-1 mission, his fifth trip to space. Less than two hours later - following a series of pressure and leak checks in the docking adapter - the four-man team opened the hatch of their Dragon spacecraft and floated into the space station, where commander Tom Marshburn and the lab’s six other crew members welcomed the new arrivals. “We’re happy to be here, even though we were a bit late, and looking forward to the next chapter. “SpaceX, Endeavour, we copy all,” one of the Dragon crew members replied. Welcome to the International Space Station. “Hope you enjoyed the extra half orbit in Dragon, or at least found it memorable. “Docking sequence complete,” SpaceX’s spacecraft communicator told the Dragon crew. All previous space station missions have been government-led or contracted by a government space agency. The flight is the first mission to travel to the space station as part of a purely commercial venture. The commercial crew mission, managed by a Houston-based company named Axiom Space, is slated to last 10 or 11 days. The automated docking capped a 21-hour flight to the station since SpaceX’s Dragon Endeavour spacecraft launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. EDT (1229 GMT) Saturday, nearly 45 minutes later than scheduled due to a video problem on the space station. The commercial spacecraft built and owned by SpaceX docked with the Harmony module at 8:29 a.m. Credit: NASA TV / Spaceflight NowĪ SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked at the International Space Station on Saturday with four private astronauts, beginning a planned stay of at least eight days - and maybe longer - while becoming the first mission with an all-commercial crew to visit the orbiting research complex. SpaceX’s Dragon Endeavour spacecraft approaches the International Space Station for docking Saturday.
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