In the course of the second completely private mission, a crew of four has arrived at the International Space Station ISS. The two women and two men reached the outpost of humanity in space on Monday and are expected to stay for around ten days, according to the US space agency NASA.
The crew started on Sunday aboard a “Dragon” capsule from the private space company SpaceX from the Cape Canaveral cosmodrome in the US state of Florida. The quartet – the former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, the ex-racing driver John Shoffner and the Saudi Arabian astronaut Rayyanah Barnawi and her colleague Ali Alqarni – are to stay on board the ISS for around ten days as part of the “Axiom-2” mission and carry out scientific experiments. 50 million euros for a journey into space The journey is organized by the private space company Axiom Space, in cooperation with NASA and SpaceX. According to media reports, the passengers each pay around 50 million euros for the trip. Founded in 2016 in Houston, Texas by former NASA manager Michael Suffredini and Iranian-American entrepreneur Kam Ghaffarian, Axiom Space sees itself as a future major player in the space market. In April 2022, “Axiom-1” was the first completely private mission to the ISS Have been carried out. At that time, the Spanish-American astronaut Michael López-Alegría, the US entrepreneur Larry Connor, the Israeli entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe and the Canadian investor Mark Pathy flew to the ISS. There had already been individual space tourists on the ISS several times, but the “Axiom-1” mission was the first completely private crew.
