Four astronauts, including Turkey's first, arrive at space station

Axtec

20/01/2024 11:08

By Steve Gorman
       Jan 20 (Reuters) - A four-man crew including Turkey's
first astronaut arrived at the International Space Station (ISS)
early on Saturday for a two-week stay in the latest such mission
arranged entirely at commercial expense by Texas-based startup
company Axiom Space.
    The rendezvous came about 37 hours after the Axiom quartet's
Thursday evening liftoff in a rocketship from NASA's Kennedy
Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
    Both the Crew Dragon vessel and the Falcon 9 rocket that
carried it to orbit were supplied, launched and operated by Elon
Musk's SpaceX under contract with Axiom, as they were in the
first two Axiom missions to the ISS since 2022.
    Once the astronauts reach the space station, they fall under
the responsibility of NASA's mission control operation in
Houston.
    The Crew Dragon autonomously docked with the ISS at 5:42
a.m. EDT (1042 GMT) as the two space vehicles were flying 
roughly 250 miles (400 km) over the South Pacific, a live NASA
webcast showed.
    Both were soaring in tandem around the globe at the
hypersonic speed of about 17,500 miles per hour (28,200 km/h) as
they joined together in orbit.
    With coupling achieved, it was expected to take about two
hours for the sealed passageway between the space station and
crew capsule to be pressurized and checked for leaks before
hatches can be opened, allowing the newly arrived astronauts to
move aboard the orbiting laboratory.
    Plans call for the Axiom-3 crew to spend roughly 14 days in
microgravity conducting more than 30 scientific experiments,
many of them focused on the effects of spaceflight on human
health and disease.    
    The multinational team was led by Michael López-Alegría, 65,
a Spanish-born retired NASA astronaut and Axiom executive making
his sixth flight to the space station. He also commanded Axiom's
debut mission - the first all-private voyage to the ISS - in
April 2022.
    His second-in-command for Ax-3 is Italian Air Force Colonel
Walter Villadei, 49. Rounding out the team are Swedish aviator
Marcus Wandt, 43, representing the European Space Agency, and
Alper Gezeravcı, 44, a Turkish Air Force veteran and fighter
pilot, making his nation's first human spaceflight.
    They will be welcomed aboard ISS by the seven members of the
station's current regular crew - two Americans from NASA, one
astronaut each from Japan and Denmark and three Russian
cosmonauts.
    Since its founding eight years ago, Houston-based Axiom has
carved out a business catering to foreign governments and
wealthy private patrons aiming to put their own astronauts into
orbit. The company charges at least $55 million per seat for its
services organizing, training and equipping customers for
spaceflight.
    Axiom also is one of a handful of companies building a
commercial space station of its own intended to eventually
replace the ISS, which NASA expects to retire around 2030. 
    Launched to orbit in 1998, the ISS has been continuously
occupied since 2000 under a U.S.-Russian-led partnership that
includes Canada, Japan and 11 countries belonging to the
European Space Agency.

 (Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; editing by David
Evans)
 ((steve.gorman@thomsonreuters.com; 310-491-7256; Reuters
Messaging: steve.gorman.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))