Washington. January 20. INTERFAX - Private aerospace company Axiom Space plans to launch the first mission in the history of cosmonautics with a fully commercial crew on board to the International Space Station (ISS) on March 31, the company announced on Twitter.
"The launch of the Axiom-1 mission, the first ever mission involving commercial crew members to the International Space Station, is scheduled for March 31," the statement said.
In September 2021, NASA announced that the Axiom-1 crew would travel to the ISS from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida. According to the management plan, a crew of four people will have to spend eight days at the station, working together with astronauts permanently residing at the station.
Initially, the launch of four tourists on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft was planned for February 28, 2022, but it was postponed for a month "due to the need to conduct additional training of the spacecraft and the workload of the station."
The tourist flight is organized by the American company Axiom Space. Earlier, she reported that the crew of the ship included former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, American entrepreneur Larry Connor, who will perform the work of the pilot, Canadian investor Mark Pati and Israeli businessman Eitan Stibbe. All of them are allowed to fly after a medical check and special training.
The cost of an eight-day visit to the ISS is estimated at $55 million. Flights with space tourists under the Axiom Space program are planned to be performed two or three times a year in the future.