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Washington (AFP)
The crew training that will constitute a completely private mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in January is announced to begin on Monday, during a joint press conference with NASA, the company Axiom Space.
Four people are to be launched in late January, a rocket hired from another space company, SpaceX, for a mission called X Space-1, which will last for about 10 days, with “seven or eight” orbits. Includes detailed Michael Suffredini. Axiom Space Boss.
On board: Only one experienced astronaut, Michael Lopez-Alegria, a former NASA officer who has been in the ISS, and three novices, American, Canadian, and Israeli businessmen, who had never been in the ISS before, into space.
They will work in the US section of the ISS, and intend to conduct scientific experiments there.
Michael Lopez-Alegria said, “We’ll start what might be called actual training next week.”
The four, who have only seen each other “a handful of times”, will go to “camp” together in Alaska in July so far due to the epidemic.
Full-time training will begin in August for Michael Lopez-Alegria, and in September for American Larry Connor for Mission Pilot.
From October, they will complete primarily from Houston in Texas, to train the ISS ‘systems and the SpaceX spacecraft, which will take them there, the Dragon.
This includes “how to use the toilet” or “communication system,” basic things as an astronaut.
Axiom Space sees this mission as a “first step” for its project to build the first commercial space station, which will initially be attached to the ISS.
When asked about the cost of the Ax-1, the Ax-1 boss remained unclear: “Tens of millions have been widely discussed, and I will not attack them.”
NASA announced in 2019 that it would welcome tourists to the ISS, which it is looking to miss to focus on distant exploration. A possibility opened up for SpaceX, which, with its rockets, gave back to the United States the possibility of launching humans from its soil into space.
© 2021 AFP
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