The second-ever private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS) has a tentative launch date once more.
NASA, SpaceX and Houston-based company Axiom Space had been targeting May 8 for the launch of Ax-2, which can send 4 people to the ISS for a roughly 10-day stay.
On Wednesday (May 3), NASA announced that Ax-2 wouldn’t lift off in early May in any case but didn’t provide a brand new goal launch date. Just two days later, nonetheless, we got one.
“Launch Update: @NASA, @Axiom_Space & @SpaceX are targeting no sooner than 5:37 p.m. EDT Sunday, May 21, for launch of Axiom Mission 2 to the @Space_Station,” NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate tweeted on Friday afternoon (opens in latest tab).
Ax-2 will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 4 crewmates will travel to and from the International Space Station in a SpaceX Dragon capsule named Freedom.
This will probably be the second space trip for Freedom; it also flew SpaceX’s Crew-4 mission to and from the orbiting lab for NASA in 2022.
The Ax-2 crewmates are Peggy Whitson, John Shoffner, Rayyanah Barnawi and Ali AlQarni. Whitson, a record-setting former NASA astronaut who now flies for Axiom, will command the mission.
Shoffner is an investor and paying customer. Barnawi and AlQarni are members of the first Saudi Arabian astronaut class. They are going to change into the primary people from the dominion to go to the ISS, and Barnawi will probably be the primary Saudi woman to achieve the ultimate frontier.
As its name suggests, Ax-2 will probably be the second mission organized and operated by Axiom Space. The primary, Ax-1, sent 4 private astronauts to the ISS for greater than two weeks in April 2022, also using SpaceX hardware.
Axiom is working on other, more ambitious projects as well. The corporate plans to launch several modules to the ISS in the approaching years. This complex will then separate and change into a free-flying private space station in Earth orbit.
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