The manned spacecraft Crew Dragon of the American aerospace company SpaceX arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) along with four crew members who became participants in the Axiom Space Ax-3 tourist mission. They will spend two weeks at the orbital station, after which they will return to Earth.
Image source: NASA TV
The Crew Dragon spacecraft with its crew on board set off on a 36-hour journey to the ISS on Thursday, January 18. A Falcon 9 launch vehicle was used to launch it into outer space.. The docking of Crew Dragon with the ISS Harmony module took place on January 20 at 13:42 Moscow time. This is already the third commercial mission for Axiom Space.. Since 2022, the company has delivered nine tourists to the ISS.
As part of the Ax-3 mission, the Crew Dragon crew included former National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria as commander, pilot Walter Villadei, who is a lieutenant colonel The Italian Air Force, as well as specialists Marcus Wandt from Sweden and Alper Gezeravci, who became the first astronaut in Turkish history.
After their arrival at the orbital station, the ISS crew became truly international. At the ISS, participants in the Ax-3 mission were met by NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara, Dane Andreas Mogensen, Japanese Satoshi Furukawa, and Russian cosmonauts Konstantin Borisov , Oleg Kononenko and Nikolay Chub.
“This is an incredibly exciting time for human spaceflight, with a third private mission allowing many more countries to participate in the research and technology development we conduct aboard the orbiting laboratory,” said Andreas Mogensen.