A group of space tourists have visited the International Space Station and returned to Earth. On April 25, 2022, the four men’s Axiom mission capsule touched down as planned in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. Previously, their departure from the ISS had been postponed several times due to the weather.
The crew – consisting of the Spanish-American astronaut Michael López-Alegría, the US entrepreneur Larry Connor, the Israeli entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe and the Canadian investor Mark Pathy – left the spaceport on April 8, 2022 in a “Crew Dragon” space capsule Cape Canaveral in the US state of Florida.
The trip to the ISS was organized by the private space company Axiom Space, in cooperation with the US space agency NASA and SpaceX, a company owned by billionaire Elon Musk.
The Ax-1 mission lasted two weeks due to the weather
There have been individual space tourists on the ISS before, but the Ax-1 mission was the first completely private crew. “The success of this first private astronaut mission to the International Space Station is an important step in opening up opportunities for space travelers and achieving NASA’s goal of enabling off-planet commercial operations in low-Earth orbit,” said NASA CEO Bill Nelson.
The Axiom planes were only supposed to stay aboard the station for eight days, which has now ended up being a good two weeks due to the weather problems. In addition to enjoying weightlessness and unique views of Earth, the astronauts should also conduct more than 25 scientific experiments.