The Texas-based astronaut mission company Axiom Space is again partnering with SpaceX to launch four astronauts from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff of the Ax-4 mission is targeted for early on Wednesday, June 25. Read on for more details.
The crew will head to the International Space Station (ISS), where they’ll spend around two weeks living and working alongside the orbital outpost’s current inhabitants.
The Ax-4 crew includes members from India, Poland, and Hungary, marking each nation’s first mission to the space station in history and second government-sponsored human spaceflight mission in over 40 years.
Shubhanshu Shukla will be India’s first national astronaut to go to space since 1984; Sławosz Uznański will be the first Polish astronaut to reach orbit since 1978; and Hungarian Tibor Kapu will be the first person from his country to head to space since 1980.
The fourth crewmember, American Peggy Whitson, will command her second commercial human spaceflight mission, which will add to her record for the longest cumulative time in space by a U.S. astronaut.
“This historic mission underscores how Axiom Space is redefining the pathway to low-Earth orbit and elevating national space programs globally,” Axiom said prior to Tuesday’s launch.
Besides organizing privately funded crewed missions to the ISS, Axiom also has a contract with NASA to develop and attach modules to the space station, with plans for these modules to later form a free-flying commercial space station.
How to watch
SpaceX is targeting 2:31 a.m. ET on Wednesday, June 25, (11:31 p.m. PT on Tuesday, June 24) , for Falcon 9’s launch of Axiom Space’s Ax-4 mission to the ISS from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A live webcast of the Ax-4 mission will begin a couple of hours before launch. You can watch it via the video player embedded at the top of this page or by heading to SpaceX’s X account, which will carry the same livestream.
For the latest mission updates, check the same account.
