WASHINGTON — Poland has grow to be the second European Space Agency member state to achieve an agreement to fly an astronaut on a non-public mission to the International Space Station.
Axiom Space said Aug. 9 it signed an agreement with Poland, in cooperation with ESA, to fly an astronaut from that nation on a future mission to the ISS. The announcement didn’t disclose the identity of the astronaut or when that person would go to the station.
“Cooperation with ESA and Axiom Space is a very important step in the event of each the Polish space sector and science,” said Waldemar Buda, Poland’s minister of economic development and technology, in an announcement. “A Polish astronaut may have the chance to check probably the most advanced Polish technologies.”
At a June 29 briefing after a gathering of the ESA Council, the agency announced that Poland was increasing its subscription to agency programs by 295 million euros ($320 million) which included the flight of a Polish astronaut to the ISS, but didn’t disclose additional details about those plans.
The most probably candidate for the flight is Sławosz Uznański, who was chosen as a reserve astronaut by ESA last November and is the one Polish member of ESA’s astronaut corps. He was amongst 11 people ESA picked as reserve astronauts, who won’t join the astronaut corps on a full-time basis but be available for chosen flight opportunities.
One other reserve astronaut, Marcus Wandt, was chosen in June to fly on one other Axiom Space mission to the ISS through an agreement involving Axiom, ESA and the Swedish National Space Agency first announced in April. Wandt is anticipated to fly on Axiom’s Ax-3 mission to the ISS in early 2024.
“Poland will probably be the second ESA-sponsored nation to send an astronaut on a industrial human spaceflight mission, establishing a growing network of countries in Europe wanting to explore the advantages of microgravity and positioning the region as pioneers of economic space,” Michael Suffredini, president and chief executive of Axiom Space, said in an announcement.
The agreements by Poland and Sweden with Axiom Space are a part of growing interest in human spaceflight in Europe. Walter Villadei, an Italian Air Force pilot who flew on a Virgin Galactic suborbital flight in June, had previously trained as a backup for Axiom’s Ax-2 mission to the station in May and is anticipated to be named to a future Axiom mission. The Hungarian government announced last November it’s spending $100 million for its own private astronaut mission to the ISS.
Each the Italian and Hungarian efforts are going down, for now, outside of ESA, however the agency sees them as signs of growing interest in human spaceflight in Europe. “Sweden, Poland and lots of others at the moment are inspired by this ambition to go to space and have an astronaut flying into space,” Josef Aschbacher, director general of ESA, said in an interview in July. “This momentum starts developing, and I can only say it’s nice to see.”
That interest, he said, hay help spur efforts by ESA to ascertain a more ambitious European human spaceflight program, which could include development of its own crew transportation systems. The agency is currently studying options for such efforts, including their costs, prematurely of a European Space Summit scheduled for November in Seville, Spain.