The next private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is just a month away.
Houston-based company Axiom Space announced on Tuesday (April 29) that it's targeting May 29 for the launch of its fourth crewed spaceflight to the orbiting lab, a mission known as Ax-4.
Ax-4 will carry a four-person crew representing four different nations to the ISS. The mission will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, riding one of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft to orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The quartet will carry nearly 60 science investigations from a total of 31 countries worldwide — a record for an Axiom mission.
Peggy Whitson, Axiom's director of human spaceflight and a record-setting former NASA astronaut, will command Ax-4. Whitson will be flying on her fifth mission to orbit and her second for Axiom Space. She will be joined by pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India, Polish mission specialist Sławosz Uznański of the European Space Agency (ESA), and mission specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary.
This will be the first time an astronaut from any of those three latter countries will fly aboard the ISS, and Uznański will be the first Polish astronaut to launch to space in more than 40 years.
"To date, these [Axiom] missions have represented 11 nations," Axiom Space Chief Scientist Lucie Low said during a call with reporters on Tuesday.
"We are opening the door to countries where, previously, access to space has been through the ISS partners, but we're opening the door to new countries, institutions and individuals that can bring new ideas that can really fuel an economy beyond Earth," she added.
Ax-4 is expected to remain docked with the ISS for about two weeks, as the crewmembers work their way through the record number of science experiments and technology demonstrations tasked to the mission.
As Axiom continues gaining on-orbit experience, the company gains confidence in its longer-term goal of constructing and operating a space station in low Earth orbit, according to Low.
"These private astronaut missions actually make us ready ourselves for Axiom Station," she said. "Our private astronaut missions are designed to flesh out and test procedures, communications, coordination, training and so much more, so that when Axiom Station is ready to become independent from the ISS, the private astronauts, the ground teams, the crews and the platform that they support will be fully functional and ready to hit the ground running."
