The first all-private crewed mission to the International Space Station
won't launch this weekend after all.
Axiom Space's Ax-1 mission had been targeting a Sunday (April 3) liftoff
from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. But on Monday (March 28),
NASA officially approved Friday (April 1) through Sunday for the crucial
"wet dress rehearsal" of its Artemis 1 moon mission, a practice session
that's also taking place at KSC. So Ax-1 is getting pushed a few days.
"NASA, Axiom and SpaceX are now looking at no earlier than April 6 for the
launch of Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1), the first private astronaut mission to the
International Space Station, pending range approval," NASA
officials wrote
in an update on Monday afternoon.
Ax-1 will use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule to send four
people to the space station for an eight-day stay. Three of them are paying
customers; the fourth is Axiom employee Michael López-AlegrÃa, a former NASA
astronaut who's commanding the mission.
SpaceX has another astronaut launch coming up from KSC as well — that of the
Crew-4 mission, which will send three NASA astronauts and one European
spaceflyer to the orbiting lab for a lengthy stint. NASA and SpaceX had been
targeting April 19 for Crew-4's liftoff, and that remains the case despite
the Ax-1 delay, agency officials said in today's update.
The Artemis 1 wet dress rehearsal is a series of tests that will simulate
the activities and procedures leading up to launch, including fueling of the
mission's huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. (That's what the "wet"
refers to.)
Artemis 1, the first-ever flight of the SLS, will send NASA's Orion capsule
on an uncrewed mission around the moon. Launch is tentatively expected in
May or June; NASA will set an official target date after analyzing the
results of the wet dress rehearsal and other tests.
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Space & Astrophysics