The all-civilian crew of Ax-1 docked at the International Space Station
The all-civilian Ax-1 crew docked at the International Space Station early Saturday morning, marking the first time private citizens have visited the spacecraft.
SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, carrying a crew of four, arrived at the ISS just before 8:30 a.m. EST after a nearly 21-hour journey launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The initial update was delayed by about 45 minutes due to some technical issues with the video.
“Mission teams have been working to route video using the SpaceX ground station for the crew on the space station allowing Dragon to proceed with the docking,” a Press Release Statuses.
Video posted on Twitter by Axiom Space, the Houston-based flight organizer, shows astronauts aboard the space station greeting and hugging the Ax-1 crew. They will be on the space station for the next eight days.
Crew Ax-1 is led by Michael López-Alegría, a retired NASA astronaut who is now Axiom Space’s vice president of business development. He was joined by three paying clients: American real estate investor Larry Connor, Canadian businessman Mark Pathy, and Eytan Stibbe, a former fighter pilot from Israel. Connor, Pathy and Stibbe each paid $55 million for the experience, like Associated Press reported This year.
While aboard the space station, they will participate in science experiments and charitable projects, including health-related research for the Mayo Clinic and Children’s Hospital of Montreal.
Axiom Space says the mission is a “precursor” to the commercialization of low-Earth orbit, and says it plans to make at least three other commercial flights to the space station. It is also planning to build a privately funded space station in orbit.
Denise Chow contribute.
at Blogtuan.info – Source: nbcnews.com – Read the original article here
