Update: The release is now scheduled for January 19. The text below has been updated to reflect the new release date.
Axiom Space is gearing up to launch its third fully private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. Here’s all you need to know.
The four-person team will take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon nine at 4:49 p. m. EST on Friday, January 19.
The team stands out for its foreign character: it includes NASA astronaut and Axiom worker Michael López-Alegria; Italian Air Force Colonel Walter Villadei; Alper Gezeravci, Turkey’s first astronaut; and Marcus Wandt, an astronaut with the European Space Agency. Aboard a Crew spacecraft, Dragon, the same capsule built through SpaceX that transports NASA astronauts to and from the ISS.
This will be López-Alegria’s sixth spaceflight and his arrival at the station with Axiom. According to NASA rules, all personal missions to the ISS must be led by a former NASA astronaut. Villadei already made Virgin Galactic’s first suborbital flight, Galactic 01, last summer.
The Dragon capsule is expected to autonomously dock with the ISS on Saturday. The team will remain at the station for 14 days, where they will conduct more than 30 clinical experiments and demonstrations. Axiom’s fourth project is scheduled for October of this year.
The mission, called Ax-3, was originally scheduled for November 2023 but was halted due to weather and other scheduling issues with SpaceX. Axiom’s first private mission, founded in Houston, launched in April 2022, with the second followed in May 2023.
But Axiom is not stopping at private astronaut missions — as if that wasn’t ambitious enough. Instead, the company aims to eventually attach commercial modules to the ISS, that Axiom owns and operates, which would detach by the end of the decade to become a free-flying Axiom Space Station. The first section, which is being developed by European aerospace manufacturer Thales Alenia Space, is scheduled to launch in 2026. While there are other private space station projects under development, notably by Blue Origin and Voyager Space, Axiom’s is the only one that will connect with the station before it is decommissioned in 2030.