Retired astronaut Peggy Whitson, America’s most experienced space flier, and three rookie crewmates from India, Poland and Hungary blasted off on a privately-financed flight to the International Space Station early Wednesday — the fourth non-government mission mounted by Houston-based Axiom Space.
Strapped into a new SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule making its maiden flight, Whitson, test pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India, European Space Agency astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland, and Hungarian engineer Tibor Kapu roared away from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 2:31 a.m. EDT.
Lighting up the overnight sky for miles around, the Falcon 9 first stage propelled the Crew Dragon out of the lower atmosphere along a northeasterly trajectory paralleling the East Coast of the United States.
The booster then fell away and flew itself back to a pinpoint landing at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to close out its second flight, SpaceX’s 467th successful first stage recovery and its 64th in Florida.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft, meanwhile, continued the climb to orbit atop the Falcon 9’s second stage. It is the fifth and final planned addition to SpaceX’s fleet of astronaut ferry ships built for NASA trips to the space station and for privately-funded commercial missions to low-Earth orbit.
The ascent went smoothly, and the capsule was released to fly on its own about nine-and-a-half minutes after liftoff. Whitson then revealed the name of the new spacecraft: Crew Dragon Grace.
“We had an incredible ride uphill, and now we’d like to set our course for the International Space Station aboard the newest member of the Dragon fleet, our spacecraft named Grace. … Grace reminds us that spaceflight is not just a feat of engineering, but an act of goodwill to the benefit of every human everywhere.”
Axiom Space provides “private astronaut missions,” or PAMs, to the International Space Station on a commercial basis. As the company’s director of human spaceflight, Whitson, a retired astronaut with three NASA flights to her credit, is making her second flight for Axiom Space.
It’s not known what her crew’s space agencies or governments paid for their flights, but Axiom passenger seats for space station visits typically sell for around $65 million to $70 million each. That covers the cost of nearly a year of NASA-sanctioned astronaut training, launch and a two-week stay aboard the station before returning to Earth with an ocean splashdown.
The crew originally hoped to begin their mission on June 10, but the flight was held up by high winds off shore and then by work to resolve an oxygen leak in the Falcon 9’s first stage plumbing. It was delayed again by renewed concern about small-but-persistent air leaks in a Russian compartment aboard the space station that connects the lab’s aft docking port to the Zvezda service module.
The leakage in the PrK vestibule was first noticed in 2019 and has been closely monitored ever since. The compartment is normally closed off unless a Russian spacecraft is using that docking port.
NASA has not explained what led to the latest concern, or what was done to resolve it, other than saying the Russians agreed to lower air pressure in the closed-off PrK compartment to about 1.9 pounds per square inch.
That presumably ensures the higher sea-level pressure in Zvezda and the rest of the station creates a tighter-than-usual seal between the service module’s aft hatch and the PrK, isolating it from the rest of the station. But NASA has not confirmed the reason for the pressure change.
In any case, Crew Dragon Grace will catch up with the space station after a 28-hour rendezvous, moving in for docking at the space-facing port or the station’s forward Harmony module at 7 a.m. Thursday.
They’ll be welcomed aboard by NASA Crew 10 commander Anne McClain, pilot Nicole Ayers, Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov and Japanese flier Takuya Onishi, along with Soyuz MS-27 crewmates Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritsky and NASA’s Jonny Kim.
With a doctorate in biochemistry, Whitson, 65, retired from NASA in 2018 after three flights to the space station. Going into the Ax-4 flight, she had logged 675 days in space including one post-retirement mission for Axiom Space.
She ranks ninth in the world for cumulative time in space, No. 1 in the world among female astronauts and No. 1 overall among U.S. astronauts.
As if all that’s not enough, she’s also the world’s most experienced female spacewalker — seventh in the world overall — with 10 excursions totaling 60 hours and 21 minutes. She was the first female and non-military chief of NASA’s astronaut office and served as the first female commander of the International Space Station.
“I think I’m somewhat addicted to space,” she said in an interview with CBS News. “I really like being there, and it’s just exhilarating living in an environment so different than what we have here on Earth. And having adapted to that environment, it is fun for me to share my experience with the rookie flyers that are going with me.
“I get to share in their experience of the first time, all over again,” she added.
Uznański-Wiśniewski summed up the feelings of his Ax-4 crewmates, saying “we consider ourselves extremely lucky to be flying with Peggy, the best commander we could have wished for.”
The Ax-4 mission follows in the footsteps of Axiom’s first three PAMs, a formal designation by NASA for commercial research flights to the International Space Station.
Throughout the two-week mission, Whitson and her crewmates will carry out a full slate of science research and technology demonstrations, along with interactive educational events in the crew’s home countries. They were trained for space station operations and will have full use of the U.S. segment of the orbital lab.
“We’ve got a lot of objectives for our mission,” Whitson said. “The first, obviously, is realizing the return of these three countries to space, but this will be their first time to go to the International Space Station.
“Obviously, they will have a number of different scientific, technological and educational goals as part of their missions from each of the countries, from India, Poland and Hungary. I will be conducting some research for Axiom space as well.”
All told, researchers from 31 countries will be helping evaluate data from the Ax-4 experiments and technology demonstrations. Whitson said the mission “opens up access to countries that might not normally get access to space. So this is very exciting.”
