The First Private Crew Blasts Off for the Space Station

The dining will be fine aboard the International Space Station (ISS) throughout the next week. Flying 408 km (254 mi.) above the Earth and clipping along at a brisk 28,000 km/h (17,500 mph), the crew will be tucking into arroz Estelle Valencia, a Spanish rice dish; secreto de cerdo with pisto—Ibérico Pork with tomatoes, onions, eggplant, and peppers; and chicken and mushroom paella. That, at least, is what four of the 11 crew members aboard the ISS will be eating—the four who will arrive at the station tomorrow morning, along with their full larder, after blasting off aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft this morning from Cape Canaveral’s Pad 39A, at 11:17 AM EDT, on the first fully private station mission. The flight, sponsored by the Houston-based company Axiom Space and known as Ax-1, is commanded by Axiom vice president and former astronaut Michael López-Alegría. Also on board are three entrepreneurs and philanthropists: American Larry Connor, Canadian Mark Pathy, and Israeli Eytan Stibbe—each of whom who paid an estimated $55 million per seat for their 20-hour journey to the station and the eight days they will spend aboard. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Space tourists have flown to the ISS before—eleven of them over the past two decades; but all of them were solo adventurers who paid to fly aboard publicly funded ships crewed by professional astronauts. AX-1 is the first fully private mission to the sta...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news