Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

NASA’s private Ax-1 crew gets some extra time in space

Trevor Mogg
By

NASA’s first private astronauts at the International Space Station (ISS) are getting a bit of extra time in space for their multimillion-dollar fees.

Poor weather conditions at the landing site off the coast of Florida has prompted NASA to delay the departure from the ISS by about 12 hours. Calm sea conditions are needed to allow the recovery vessel to safely approach the capsule after it lands in the water.

Recommended Videos

The four-person Ax-1 crew — comprising Canadian investor and philanthropist Mark Pathy, American entrepreneur Larry Connor,  former Israeli Air Force pilot Eytan Stibbe, and retired NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría — was originally set to leave the station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft at 10:35 a.m. ET (7:35 a.m. PT) on Tuesday, April 19.

Related

But, weather permitting, they will now depart at about 10 p.m. ET (7 p.m. PT) on the same day, with splashdown expected to take place at around 3:25 p,m. ET (12:25 p.m. PT) on Wednesday, April 20.

“Mission Control has informed the Expedition 67 and Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) crews aboard the International Space Station that because of unfavorable weather at the splashdown location for recovery of the Dragon Endeavour and the Ax-1 crew, the integrated operations team at NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX has postponed the spacecraft’s planned departure from the orbiting laboratory,” NASA said in a message posted online on Monday, April 18.

Assuming the Ax-1 crewmembers leave the station on Tuesday, they will have spent a total of 12 days in space in what was NASA’s first private astronaut mission as part of plans to commercialize low-Earth orbit. The mission was organized by Texas-based Axiom Space and used SpaceX hardware for transportation. Pathy, Connor, and Stibbe reportedly paid $55 million each for the experience.

During their brief stay aboard the orbiting outpost, the visitors conducted a range of scientific experiments, as well as outreach and commercial activities as they worked alongside their professional astronaut counterparts.

Last week, the Ax-1 crew answered questions about their time aboard the ISS.

Folks interested in watching the Ax-1 crew depart the station for their journey home can watch a livestream of events that will include the farewell ceremony aboard the ISS, hatch closure, and the undocking of the spacecraft.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
NASA may use a ‘space tug’ to decommission the space station
The space station and Earth.

NASA is aiming to build a special spacecraft capable of guiding the International Space Station to a safe deorbit position when it’s decommissioned in 2030.

Details of the plan were laid out in recent days when the White House released its budget request for 2024.

Read more
NASA targets today for Crew-5 astronauts’ journey home
SpaceX's Crew-5 astronauts.

SpaceX’s Crew-5 astronauts are aiming to depart the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday, bringing to an end a five-month stay aboard the facility.

The current plan is for NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, along with Japan’s Koichi Wakata and Russia’s Anna Kikina, to undock from the space station aboard their Crew Dragon spacecraft at 5:05 p.m. ET before splashing down at 9:25 p.m. ET on Friday, March 10.

Read more
Roman Space Telescope will survey the sky 1,000 times faster than Hubble
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

Since its launch in 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope has been delighting space fans with its stunning views of space objects near and far. But NASA has another space telescope in the works that will be able to help answer even more of the big questions in astronomy. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch in 2027 and colloquially known as Roman, will look at vast areas of space to help cosmologists understand the universe on a large scale.

In astronomy research, it's important to be able to look both in very great detail and on a very wide scale. Telescopes like Hubble and James Webb have exceptional sensitivity, so they can look at extremely distant objects. Roman will be different, aiming to get a broad view of the sky. The image below illustrates the differences between the telescopes, showing what Roman and Hubble can capture in one go and comparing Hubble's detailed, but narrow view to Roman's much wider view.

Read more