After a journey of almost 21 hours, Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria, Larry Connor, Eytan Stibbe, and Mark Pathy arrived at the International Space Station at 8:29 a.m. EDT Saturday, April 9. The SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft docked to the orbital complex while the spacecraft were flying about 260 miles above the Atlantic Ocean.
Dragon’s docking was delayed approximately 45 minutes as the space station teams, including mission controls at NASA and SpaceX, worked to troubleshoot an issue preventing the crew members on station from receiving views from Dragon’s center line camera of the Harmony’s modules docking port. Mission teams worked to route video using a SpaceX ground station to the crew on the space station allowing Dragon to proceed with docking.
Following Dragon’s link up to the Harmony module, NASA astronaut and station commander Tom Marshburn will pressurize the space in between the Dragon and station hatches and perform a leak check before opening the hatches to welcome the private astronaut crew.
Once aboard the station, the Axiom crew will be welcomed by Expedition 67 crew members, including NASA astronauts Marshburn, Raja Chari, and Kayla Barron, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Matthias Maurer, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Sergey Korsokov, and Denis Matveev.
The Ax-1 crew is the first all-private astronaut crew to travel to the ISS.
Follow along for mission updates with #Ax1 on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
.jpg)
.svg)