The first all-private crew to visit the International Space Station landed in the Atlantic Ocean on Monday, completing the first mission a Houston company organized as a precursor to building its own space station.
Axiom Space brought home its four-person crew at 12:06 p.m. CDT. Larry Connor, 72, Mark Pathy, 52, Eytan Stibbe, 64, and Michael López-Alegría, 63, spent 17 days in space, including 15 days living and working alongside NASA astronauts on the International Space Station.
Their mission was originally planned for 10 days, with eight days on the space station, but bad weather at the landing site off the coast of Florida helped extend the trip — giving the crew their millions of dollars’ worth with a few extra days in microgravity.
This mission, Ax-1, is the first of many missions planned by Houston-based Axiom Space. The company is sending paying customers to the International Space Station to generate revenues and learn how to operate in microgravity. It plans to launch the first segment of its commercially owned and operated space station in late 2024.
“It’s like the first chapter of many chapters,” said Axiom Space co-founder Kam Ghaffarian. “A beginning of many beginnings. We will have private astronauts going to space as part of democratizing low-Earth orbit and creating this new ecosystem.”
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The men wanted to set a good example of what everyday citizens can do in space. They tried not to be a nuisance — their presence expanded the station’s crew to 11 people — and they contributed to a database examining how commercial astronauts (who may or may not be as fit as NASA astronauts) react to microgravity.
Houston’s Translational Research Institute for Space Health, a NASA-funded organization at the Baylor College of Medicine, is collecting this data. Connor is now the oldest person to participate in the database. And last year, the organization gathered information from a childhood cancer survivor who went into space on the Inspiration4 mission.
“The diversity here is key,” said Dr. Emmanuel Urquieta, chief medical officer for the Translational Research Institute for Space Health. “They really provide the data that we need to know so we can safely send any human into space.”
Before and after their mission, the crew had their eyes examined and provided physiological data, including heart rate variability and blood oxygen saturation. They also used tablets to participate in cognitive tests and sensory motor tests. The latter could help researchers understand who might get motion sick and how that might be prevented.
“This one is absolutely critical,” Urquieta said. “If you get space motion sickness, you’re going to be feeling bad for pretty much half of your mission.”
See here for the background. As someone who occasionally suffers from motion sickness, I applaud them for adding to the research, from which I hope to benefit some day. As I said before, better them than me.