NASA’s retiree turned into private astronaut Peggy Whitson threw himself in the fifth flight to the orbit of his early career on Wednesday, united by crew companions of India, Poland and Hungary who are going to the first visit of their countries to the International Space Station (ISS).
The Astronaut team took off from the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, around 2:30 AM EDT (11:30 AM PKT), starting the last mission organized by the Startup based in Texas Axiom Space in association with the Rocket Venture Spacex of Elon Musk.
The four -member team was carried high in an imposing Spacex launch vehicle that consists of a crew dragon capsule on a two -stage Falcon 9 rocket.
The live video showed the imposing spacecraft in the night sky on the Atlantic coast of Florida, dragged by a brilliant yellowish burning plume.
The cameras inside the crew compartment transmitted images of the four astronauts tied to their pressurized cabin, calmly sitting next to each other with black and black flight suits with a helmet while their spacecraft rose to space.
“We have had an incredible uphill,” Whitson went to the Spacex mission control near Los Angeles when the Falcon upper scenario delivered the crew capsule to her preliminary orbit about nine minutes after the launch.
Nicknamed “Grace” by the Axiom team, the newly built dragon team launched on Wednesday was making its debut flight as the fifth vehicle of its kind in the Spacex capsules fleet.
He also marked the first Dragon Flight crew since Musk briefly threatened to dismantle the spacecraft after the president of the United States, Donald Trump, threatened to cancel Musk’s government contracts in a high profile political dispute earlier this month.
Two weeks in orbit
It was expected that the drafulation dragon operated autonomous axiom 4 would arrive at the ISS after a flight of approximately 28 hours, then hit the advanced position as the two vehicles rise together in orbit in orbit about 400 kilometers on the earth.
If everything goes according to the plan, the axiom 4 crew will be welcome aboard the orbiting space laboratory on Thursday morning by its seven current resident occupants: three astronauts from the United States, one from Japan and three cosmonauts from Russia.
Whitson, 65, and his three axiom-crew companions 4-Shubhanshu Shukla, 39, from India, Sawosz Uznaski-Winiewski, 41, from Poland and Tibor Kapu, 33, of Hungry, are scheduled to spend 14 days aboard the space station that performs a microgravity investigation.
The mission stands out as the fourth flight of this type since 2022 organized by Axiom as the Houston company is based on its business of putting astronauts sponsored by private companies and foreign governments in earth orbit.
For India, Poland and Hungary, the launch marked a return to the human space flight after more than 40 years and the first mission to send its astronauts to the ISS.
The participation of the Axiom 4 of Shukla, a pilot of the Air Force of India, is seen by the Indian space program itself as a kind of precursor to the crushed debut mission of its Gaganyaan orbital spacecraft, planned by 2027.
The Axiom 4 team is directed by Whitson, who retired from NASA in 2018 after a pioneer race that included becoming the first main astronaut woman of the United States space agency and the first woman to order an expedition of the ISS.
Now consultant and director of human spatial flights for Axiom, she has registered 675 days in space, an American record, during three NASA missions and a fourth flight to space as commander of the Axiom 2 mission in 2023.
Wednesday’s displacement marked the 18th Human Flight of Spacex since the Musk Private Funds Rocket Company marked the beginning of a new era for NASA five years ago, providing US astronauts for their first trips to space from the US soil from the end of the space transfers in 2011.
Axiom, a nine -year -old company co -founded by the former NASA ISS programs manager, is one of the few companies that develop a commercial space station aimed at replacing the ISS, which NASA expects to retire around 2030.
NASA, in addition to providing the launch site in Cape Cañaveral, assumes the responsibility of astronauts who venture at the space station once they meet the advanced position in orbit.
