La première mission spatiale entièrement privée à s’être rendue dans la Station spatiale internationale, composée de trois hommes d’affaires et d’un ancien astronaute de la Nasa, doit quitter dimanche le laboratoire volant de aux de directionéil ground.
The SpaceX capsule is scheduled to lift off from the space station (ISS) at 8:55 p.m. EST (0055 GMT on Monday), and its return to flight will begin off the coast of Florida, scheduled for around 1:00 p.m. . Monday (17:00 GMT).
The four men – three clients who each paid tens of millions of dollars, and former Spanish-American astronaut Michael Lopez Alegria – were originally scheduled to spend just eight days on the International Space Station.
But their departure was postponed several times due to bad weather.
American Larry Connor, president of a real estate company, Canadian Mark Pathy, president of an investment company, and former Israeli pilot Eitan Stipe, co-founder of an investment fund, had taken off on April 8 from Florida. They arrived at the International Space Station the next day.
On board the ship, they conducted a whole series of experiments, in partnership with research centers. These focused on aging or heart health. They were also able to try a headset that records cognitive performance in weightlessness, according to the station’s log, posted on the NASA blog.
Canadian Mark Bathy also spent a lot of time in the famous observation dome of the International Space Station, in order to photograph the Earth.
The mission was christened Ax-1, and it was Axiom Space that acted as a space travel agency: it bought transportation from SpaceX, and paid a bonus to NASA for the use of its station.
NASA has already formally approved the principle for the second mission, AX-2.
After the departure of the Ax-1, seven people will remain on board the station: three Americans, one German and three Russians.
Monday will be the fifth landing of the manned Dragon capsule. SpaceX now regularly transports NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.
Elon Musk also did another completely special mission last year, but this mission did not go to the space station, and the four passengers on board simply stayed in the capsule for three days.
