NASA’s first private mission to the International Space Station was successfully completed after a four-man crew crashed into a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule off the coast of Florida.
Four members of the Ax-1 crew – Canadian investor and philanthropist Mark Patty, American businessman Larry Connor, former Israeli Air Force pilot Eitan Stibbe and former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Allegria – descended into the Atlantic Ocean, at 1 o’clock near Jackson Monday, April 25, at 6:00 p.m. ET (10:06 p.m. PT).
# Ax1: The first private crew in @Space_Station pic.twitter.com/Ud4E81YePy
– Axiom Space (@Axiom_Space) April 25, 2022
Private astronauts were met by the recovery ship and brought ashore before being helped out of the capsule. Everyone is said to be in good shape after a 17-day mission that turned out to be seven days longer than originally planned after bad weather at the landing site delayed their return.
The video below shows the last few minutes of the return journey with parachutes deployed to slow the descent of the capsule.
“The success of this first private astronaut mission on the International Space Station is an important step in opening opportunities for space travelers and achieving NASA’s goal of building a commercial business outside the planet in low Earth orbit,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. said in the issue.
NASA’s first private mission to the ISS, organized by Texas-based Axiom Space using SpaceX equipment, is said to have cost each participant about $ 55 million.
During their stay at the orbital outpost, the Ax-1 crew lived with the current team of professional astronauts of the station, conducting a number of scientific experiments, as well as information and communal and commercial activities. While on board the station, the Ax-1 crew answered questions about how it was to live and work 250 miles above the Earth.
This was not the first time non-professional astronauts had visited the space station, although it was the first time NASA had been involved. American Dennis Tito became the first private citizen to remain aboard the ISS in 2001 after reportedly paying $ 20 million to Russia’s NASA counterpart Roscosmos for a trip aboard the Soyuz spacecraft.
And at the end of last year, a Japanese billionaire businessman and his associate paid Roscosmos for a short stay aboard a space station.
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See how NASA’s first private mission to the ISS took place
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