A crew of four, including the first Turkish astronaut, arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday for a two-week stay as part of the latest mission of its kind, organized entirely at private expense by Texas-based startup Axiom Space. reports Reuters.

The arrival at its destination came about 37 hours after the Axiom crew lifted off Thursday evening aboard the rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Both the Crew Dragon capsule that carried the astronauts and the Falcon 9 rocket that launched it into orbit were delivered, launched and operated by SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, under contract to Axiom, as were Axiom’s first two missions to the ISS, starting in 2022 , quoted by News.ro.

Once on the space station, the astronauts assume responsibility for managing NASA’s mission in Houston.

Crew Dragon autonomously docked with the ISS at 10:42 GMT (12:42 GMT), after the two spacecraft flew about 400 km over the South Pacific Ocean, a NASA live webcast showed.

The two lifted off in tandem and flew around the globe at a hypersonic speed of about 28,200 km/h before reaching orbit.

After docking was complete, it took about two hours for the sealed space between the space station and the crew capsule to be pressurized and checked for leaks before the hatches could be opened, allowing the newly arrived astronauts to move aboard the orbiting laboratory.

The Axiom-3 crew will spend 14 days in microgravity performing more than 30 scientific experiments, many of which focus on the effects of spaceflight on human health and disease.

Turk, first time in space

The multinational team is led by Michael López-Alegría, 65, a retired Spanish NASA astronaut and director of Axiom, who is making his sixth flight to the space station. He also led Axiom’s debut mission — the first fully private trip to the ISS — in April 2022.

His deputy on the Ax-3 is Italian Air Force Colonel Walter Villadei, 49 years old.

Rounding out the team are 43-year-old Swedish pilot Markus Wandt, who represents the European Space Agency, and 44-year-old Alper Gezeravci, a veteran of the Turkish Air Force and a fighter pilot who became the first citizen of his country to travel to space.

They were met on board the ISS by seven members of the station’s current full-time crew – two Americans from NASA, one astronaut each from Japan and Denmark, and three Russian cosmonauts.

Since its founding eight years ago, Houston-based Axiom has built a business serving foreign governments and wealthy private patrons who want to send their own astronauts into orbit. The company is raising at least $55 million for its services in organizing, training and equipping customers for spaceflight.

Axiom is also one of several companies building its own space station, intended to eventually replace the ISS, which NASA expects to retire around 2030.

Launched into orbit in 1998, the ISS has been continuously occupied since 2000 by a partnership led by the US and Russia, which also includes Canada, Japan and 11 countries belonging to the European Space Agency. (News.ro)