First all-private astronaut team welcomed aboard International Space Station
- The arrival came 21 hours after the four-man team representing Houston-based Axiom Space Inc lifted off on Friday from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre
- The new arrivals brought two dozen science and biomedical experiments to conduct aboard ISS, including research on brain health, cardiac stem cells, cancer and ageing
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 space flight.
Their arrival came about 21 hours after the four-man team representing Houston-based start-up company Axiom Space Inc lifted off on Friday from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, riding atop a SpaceX-launched Falcon 9 rocket.
The Crew Dragon capsule lofted into orbit by the rocket docked with the ISS on Saturday as the two space vehicles were flying roughly 250 miles (420km) 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 pressurised and checked for leaks before hatches were opened to allow the newly arrived astronauts to come aboard the ISS.
