WASHINGTON, United States: An all-European quartet of astronauts, including the first from Turkey, splashed down on the coast of Florida on Friday morning, completing Axiom Space’s third private mission to the International Space Station.
Axiom Mission 3 (Ax-3) was the company’s first launch where all three paid seats were purchased by national agencies rather than wealthy individuals.
A live stream showed the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule named “Freedom” parachuting into the Atlantic Ocean, where it was captured and brought aboard a rescue ship.
“I am very proud of my Ax-3 crew members who have helped their agencies achieve all of their science goals, technology demonstrations and outreach events,” Axiom Chief Astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, a Spanish-American citizen and former NASA astronaut, said in farewell. ceremony before the crew returns to Earth.
The mission was originally scheduled to last two weeks, but the return trip was delayed by several days due to bad weather, resulting in an 18-day stay on the ISS.
Lopez-Alegria was joined by Turkish pilot and Air Force Colonel Alper Gezeravci, Italian Air Force Colonel Walter Villadei, who previously flew to the edge of space on the Virgin Galactic space plane, and Marcus Wandt of Sweden, who also represented the European Space Agency.
States with smaller space programs are increasingly turning to the private sector to fulfill their space ambitions, with Turkey in particular hailing the mission as a sign of its growing stature on the world stage.
The crew conducted 30 experiments, learning more about the effects of microgravity on the human body, advancing industrial processes, and more.
Axiom Space was founded in 2016 by Michael Suffredini, a former ISS programme manager for NASA, and entrepreneur Kam Ghaffarian.
In addition to organizing private missions to the orbital base, the company is developing spacesuits for future NASA missions to the Moon.
It is also building a commercial space station that it intends to initially attach to the ISS, then detach and orbit independently sometime before the ISS is decommissioned.
The exact cost of the Ax-3 has not been disclosed, but in 2018, when the company first announced the program, which involves leasing SpaceX’s hardware and paying NASA for services, it pegged the price at $55 million per seat.
Hungary was recently reported to be planning a $100 million deal with Axiom for a future mission involving one astronaut, according to spacenews.com.
Britain, which is seeking to build a post-Brexit space strategy, has also signed an agreement on a future mission with British astronauts.
