DUBAI: The first all-private team of astronauts ever launched to the International Space Station (ISS) were welcomed aboard the orbiting research platform on Saturday to begin a weeklong science mission hailed as a milestone in commercial spaceflight.
Their arrival came about 21 hours after the four-man team representing Houston-based startup company Axiom Space Inc. lifted off on Friday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, riding atop a SpaceX-launched Falcon 9 rocket.
The Crew Dragon capsule lofted into orbit by the rocket docked with the ISS at about 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) on Saturday as the two space vehicles were flying roughly 250 miles (420 km) above the central Atlantic Ocean, a live webcast of the coupling from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration showed.
The final approach was delayed for about 45 minutes by a technical glitch with a video feed used to monitor the capsule’s rendezvous with the ISS, but it otherwise proceeded smoothly.
The multinational Axiom team, planning to spend eight days in orbit, was led by retired Spanish-born NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, 63, the company’s vice president for business development.
His second-in-command was Larry Connor, a real estate and technology entrepreneur and aerobatics aviator from Ohio designated as the mission pilot. Connor is in his 70s, but the company did not provide his precise age.
Rounding out the Ax-1 crew were investor-philanthropist and former Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe, 64, and Canadian businessman and philanthropist Mark Pathy, 52, both serving as mission specialists.
With docking achieved, it took nearly two hours for the sealed passageway between the space station and crew capsule to be pressurized and checked for leaks before hatches were opened to allow the newly arrived astronauts to come aboard the ISS.
The Ax-1 team was welcomed by all seven of the regular, government-paid crew members already occupying the space station: three American astronauts, a German astronaut from the European Space Agency and three Russian cosmonauts.
The NASA webcast showed the four smiling Axiom astronauts, dressed in navy blue flight suits, floating headfirst, one by one, through the portal into the space station, warmly greeted with hugs and handshakes by the ISS crew.
Lopez-Alegria later pinned astronaut wings onto the uniforms of the three spaceflight rookies of his Axiom team — Connor, Stibbe and Pathy — during a brief welcome ceremony.
Stibbe is now the second Israeli to fly to space, after Ilan Ramon, who perished with six NASA crewmates in the 2003 space shuttle Columbia disaster.
SCIENCE FOCUSED
The new arrivals brought with them two dozen science and biomedical experiments to conduct aboard ISS, including research on brain health, cardiac stem cells, cancer and aging, as well as a technology demonstration to produce optics using the surface tension of fluids in microgravity.
The mission, a collaboration among Axiom, Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX and NASA, has been touted by all three as a major step in the expansion of space-based commercial activities collectively referred to by insiders as the low-Earth orbit economy, or “LEO economy” for short.
NASA officials say the trend will help the US space agency focus more of its resources on big-science exploration, including its Artemis program to send humans back to the moon and ultimately to Mars.
While the space station has hosted civilian visitors from time to time, the Ax-1 mission marks the first all-commercial team of astronauts sent to ISS for its intended purpose as an orbiting research laboratory.
The Axiom mission also stands as SpaceX’s sixth human spaceflight in nearly two years, following four NASA astronaut missions to the space station and the Inspiration 4 launch in September that sent an all-civilian crew into orbit for the first time. That flight did not dock with the ISS.
Axiom executives say their astronaut ventures and plans to build a private space station in Earth orbit go far beyond the astro-tourism services offered to wealthy thrill-seekers by such companies as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, owned respectively by billionaire entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson.
Space station’s first all-private astronaut team welcomed aboard orbiting platform
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Space station’s first all-private astronaut team welcomed aboard orbiting platform
- The Crew Dragon capsule lofted into orbit by the rocket docked with the ISS at about 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) on Saturday
- The final approach was delayed for about 45 minutes by a technical glitch with a video feed used to monitor the capsule's rendezvous with the ISS
US, Ukraine hail ‘productive’ Miami talks but no breakthrough
- Representatives from Ukraine, Russia, and Kyiv’s European allies, held separate talks hosted by US special envoy Steve Witkoff
- Russia's delegation said recent proposed changes to Trump's “20-point plan” to end the war were a non-starter
MIAMI, Florida: US and Ukrainian envoys issued a joint statement on Sunday that hailed “productive and constructive” talks in Miami but did not announce any apparent breakthrough in efforts to end the war with Russia.
Top representatives from both Ukraine and Russia, as well as Kyiv’s European allies, have been in southern Florida over the past several days for a series of separate talks hosted by US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff.
The meetings were the latest in a weeks-long diplomatic blitz over plans to end the war, after Washington last month presented a 28-point proposal widely seen as echoing the Kremlin’s demands.
It has since been redrafted following Ukraine and Europe’s involvement, though its contents have not been publicly disclosed.
“Over the last three days in Florida, the Ukrainian delegation held a series of productive and constructive meetings with American and European partners,” Witkoff and Ukraine’s top negotiator, Rustem Umerov, said in separate statements on X.
They said a bilateral US-Ukraine meeting focused on developing and aligning positions on “four key documents” — a “20-point plan,” a “Multilateral security guarantee framework,” a “US Security guarantee framework for Ukraine” and an “economic & prosperity plan.”
“Particular attention was given to discussing timelines and the sequencing of next steps,” they said, without announcing any further meetings.
National security advisers from Kyiv’s European allies “also joined the discussions to align on a shared strategic approach between Ukraine, the United States, and Europe,” the statements added.
Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev was also in southern Florida and met with the US delegation, which included billionaire real estate developer Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Witkoff on Sunday similarly said that the meetings with Dmitriev were “productive and constructive.”
Earlier, the Kremlin said recent proposed changes to the plan to end the war were a non-starter.
Dmitriev “should receive information about what has been developed by the Americans and Europeans” in the plan and report that back to Moscow later, Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state TV.
Moscow, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022, sees Europe as pro-war and argues that its participation in the talks only hinders them.
War rages on
While little is known of the latest peace plans, Kyiv is likely to be expected to surrender some territory — a prospect resented by many Ukrainians — in exchange for US security guarantees.
Though envoys from both Moscow and Kyiv were in town, the Kremlin had earlier ruled out three-way talks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier described the talks as “constructive” and said they were “moving at a fairly rapid pace.”
He nevertheless cautioned that “much depends on whether Russia feels the need to end the war for real.”
He also hailed this week as “historic” for Ukraine, thanking Europe for pledging $100 billion of funding over the next two years.
Moscow’s troops have been steadily advancing at the eastern front in recent months. Putin on Friday hailed the Russian army’s territorial gains — and threatened more in the coming weeks.
Just over the week, “Russia has launched approximately 1,300 attack drones, nearly 1,200 guided aerial bombs, and 9 missiles of various types” against Ukraine, Zelensky said.
Most of them have pummeled the Black Sea region of Odesa, where relentless strikes wrought havoc on ports, bridges and energy facilities, killing eight people Saturday.
In the eastern Sumy region, Russian troops attempted a breakthrough in an area previously spared from an intense ground offensive. Russian forces forcibly moved 50 people from a local village, said Kyiv.
“Russian invaders have stolen five dozen civilian people, mostly elderly women, from a tiny Ukrainian village Grabovske, right across the state border in the Sumy region,” Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said.
Russia made no comment on the matter.
