After a series of delays from the weather to rocket engines and leaks of the International Space Station, NASA cleared the way SpaceX fires an Axiom Space Ax-4 crew on Space Coast.
The Falcon 9 rocket topped with a new Crew Dragon capsule is about to lift it with four members of the private mission from Kennedy Space Center’s Launchpad 39-A at 2:31am Wednesday.
The first phase booster is making its second flight, aiming for a recovery landing in landing zone 1 at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The AX-4 crew is led by Commander Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut and currently an Axiom Space employee who is on his fifth trip to space, leading the Axiom Space Mission. Already in orbit in the book, she holds records of every woman and American for time in space.
She occupying three customers who have been paid seats from a country that has not sent astronauts into space for more than 40 years.
The pilot will be played by India’s Shuvansch Shukla, while Poland’s Swos Uznaski, project astronauts for the European Space Agency, and Hungary’s Tibor Kap are mission specialists.
The Quartet will spend about two weeks on a space station that will carry out more than 60 experiments, including ones in partnership with NASA. This marks the fourth trip to the station for an axiom space.
NASA had released OK because of a recent fix to a recent year-old leak on the Russian side of the space station. NASA wanted to ensure it remained stable in aged stations that have been continuously densely populated since November 2000.
SpaceX and Axiom Space had already seen repairs for the first phase booster of the Falcon 9 after its launch attempts were halted earlier this month due to weather.
The private mission to the station is part of Axiom Space’s long-term plan to build its own space station.
The mission originally targeted the 2024 launch, but faces a series of delays, including having to give up on the NASA Crew 10 mission that flew in March, the Crew Dragon Endurance, the originally planned ride.
The trade-off is that the AX-4 crew will fly in SpaceX’s fifth and become its final Crew Dragon capsule. It gives them the traditional honor of naming it once it reaches orbit.
Since its first human spaceflight in 2020, SpaceX has transported four other crew dragon spacecraft into space 17 times.
