SpaceX launch: A private mission is set to lift off to the International Space Station

The Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) to the International Space Station was launched on Friday, April 8, 2022, by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft, along with Commander Michael López-Alegra of Spain and the United States, Pilot Larry Connor of the United States, and Mission Specialists Eytan Stibbe of Israel and Mark Pathy of Canada.

Four people, including three paying clients, are scheduled to be launched by SpaceX for a week-long stay on the International Space Station. The second entirely private mission to the orbiting outpost, organized by the Houston-based business Axiom, will take place on this trip.

Rayyanah Barnawi, a stem cell researcher, will be the first Saudi Arabian woman to travel to space on the AX-2 mission, which will also make history.

From NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a live stream of the launch will start at 4:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, with liftoff planned at 5:37 p.m. ET.

The weather will be carefully tracked by officials. Florida is entering the summer rainy season, when daily thunderstorms tend to pass over the region, according to Brian Cizek, a weather official with the US Space Force. The forecast for Sunday, he continued, is "pretty decent."

The anvil coming off the top of those thunderstorms is really the only thing we'll need to keep an eye out for, according to Cizek.

SpaceX can try again to launch the mission on Monday if it doesn't take off on Sunday, but there is an 80% probability that the weather won't be clear enough. After that, there may be more significant delays since NASA needs to launch a SpaceX cargo mission.

This voyage is the following in a series of trips that NASA and Axiom Space believe will keep the commercial sector interested in spaceflight, especially in low Earth orbit, where the space station is located.

Linda Whitson, a 63-year-old former NASA astronaut who currently works for Axiom, will be in charge of the AX-2 crew. Whitson will lead a private spaceflight for the first time with the completion of this mission.

Three paying clients, including John Shoffner, an American who founded the hardware company Dura-Line Corp. and amassed a fortune in the global interaction industry, will be joining her.

Barnawi and Ali AlQarni, a fighter pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force, were also flown for a fee by Saudi Arabia.

According to Barnawi, who spoke to reporters last week, "I am very honored and happy to be representing all the dreams and all the hopes of all the people in Saudi Arabia and all the women back home."

Seven astronauts who are already on board the space station will be joined by the Crew Dragon capsule's passengers when it docks with the orbiting laboratory early on Monday.

Approximately eight days will pass while the AX-2 crew is stationed there. They will complete more than 20 investigations and science initiatives, including stem cell and other biological studies, throughout that time.

  The AX-2 crew

     Whitson will make his first trip back to the space station since 2017. She set a US record for the most total days spent in space thanks to her prolonged time on the station.

Whitson has flown on both NASA's space shuttle and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, but she claimed that training for this mission was "obviously different" because it included using SpaceX's Crew Dragon, which has only been carrying passengers since 2020.

Learning this specific spacecraft has been one of my major challenges, she said. But I've had a great time doing it.

AlQarni and Barnawi will be the second and third Saudis to visit space, respectively. The first was Prince Sultan bin Salman, who traveled in a NASA space shuttle for approximately a week in 1985.

The Biden administration and Congress have often criticized Saudi Arabia for its record on human rights, but relations between the US and Saudi Arabia are nevertheless close.

The engagement of Arabs in spaceflight, according to AlQarni, is a "great opportunity" that might motivate the area.

It will "carry a strong message. He added during a news briefing on Tuesday, "We are holding hands, we are working together for the welfare of humanity, and we are just trying to innovate.

The Future of private spaceflight

Private individuals are currently paying to travel to space. In the early 2000s, a business by the name of Space Adventures organized many such trips to the space station, reserving seats for wealthy thrill-seekers aboard Russian Soyuz rockets.

By collaborating with SpaceX to create a framework for transporting a variety of clients to the space station, Axiom introduced that business model to the United States. In April 2022, the company's AX-1 mission became the first private passenger flight from US soil to the space station.

The objective of Axiom is to make these missions routine, increasing the accessibility of spaceflight to those who are not trained, astronauts. Axiom Space's chief of mission integration and operations, Derek Hussmann, stated during a prelaunch news conference that his business anticipates seeing more clients sponsored by governments, similar to the AX-2 passengers from Saudi Arabia.

Government astronauts are in fact a crucial component of our commercial strategy, he added. Since nothing like this had ever been done before, "early in the program, it wasn't apparent to us what the balance would be between private individuals and government astronauts. But we've realized that the government market is crucial, so we're actively pursuing it.

According to Axiom leadership, commercial spaceflight will carry on even after the space station is shut down in 2030, as predicted by NASA. One of the US businesses vying to build a brand-new, privately owned space station is Axiom. Supported by NASA, the initiative intends to increase local private-sector involvement so that NASA may concentrate on funding deep-space exploration.

The AX-2 crew will work on the space station alongside the professional astronauts, albeit their timetables will be different. They will rely on the crew already on board to show them around once they arrive, including the kitchen and bathrooms. According to Hassmann, several locations will continue to be off-limits, including the airlock where astronauts perform spacewalks.