A historic, all-private space flight has been delayed from departing the International Space Station due to bad weather. According to an update by NASA and SpaceX, the crew's undocking from the space lab is moved to Sunday, April 24.
Axiom Mission 1 Departure from ISS Postponed to Sunday
The historic Ax-1 crew has arrived at the International Space Station. Commander Michael López-Alegría, Pilot Larry Connor, Mission Specialist Eytan Stibbe, and Mission Specialist Mark Pathy entered the space station shortly after the hatch opened at 10:13 a.m. EDT on Saturday, April 9.
The four-man team, known as the Ax-1 crew, includes partners from the Axiom Space. The first-ever commercial space flight was carried out in collaboration with NASA and SpaceX. Because of unexpected exterminates recorded back here on the surface, the Ax-1 crew must wait another day to depart from the ISS.
The Ax-1 crew will be transported from the space lab to Earth via SpaceX's Dragon vessel. Weather reports showed intense winds straight from the splashdown sites in the waters of Florida. The itinerary was initially planned for Saturday evening, April 23.
According to a press release, NASA, SpaceX, and Axiom Space unanimously decided to call off the undocking procedures at the ISS due to the negative results presented during the mission's weather briefing.
The Axiom Mission 1 will undock from the space station on Sunday, April 24, at exactly 8:55 PM.
The Ax-1 crew was launched by SpaceX on April 8 as part of Axiom Space's commercial-only short trip to the ISS. Three of the crew were paying passengers.
Axiom Space's private flight was led by commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, who previously served as an astronaut at NASA. Passengers include investors and entrepreneurs from America (Larry Connor), Israel (Eytan Stibbe), and Canada (Mark Pathy).
The private three passengers each paid $55 million for the short trip, Space reports.
The commercial flight was not simply a roundtrip, all of the crew carried out requested experiments for various projects and minted NFT pieces on the space station. There were also education outreach activities led by the entrepreneurs that showed the studies and daily life of experts on space.
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Upcoming Missions by NASA and SpaceX
Ax-1 crew's postponed undocking from the ISS inflicted minimal issues to the scheduled projects already slated by NASA.
SpaceX will continue to launch the aspirate mission in the upcoming week. This flight will include the Crew-4 mission that will take off from Pad39A in NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The upcoming Florida launch is set to commence on Tuesday, April 26.
The Crew-2 mission was already delayed in previous months due to the scheduling problems of the Ax-1 mission. The launch next week will include passengers that will also be carried by SpaceX's Dragon capsule.
Reports state that both the Ax-1 and Crew-4 missions, along with other projects at the Kennedy Space Center, were moved due to the fueling phase of the NASA Artemis 1 Space Launch System.
After the flight of Crew-4, SpaceX Dragon will bring back Crew-3 from ISS to Earth.
NASA and partners hope that the undocking of Axiom Mission 1 will be carried out smoothly. If no problems persist, people can watch the departure live on NASA TV
.
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