The world’s first fully private crew on the International Space Station must wait at least another day to leave the orbiting lab after bad weather prevented a planned undocking on Saturday (April 23).
NASA, SpaceX and the company Axiom Space, which supports the private Ax-1 mission, canceled plans to undock a SpaceX Dragon carrying its four-man crew due to unacceptably high winds at splashdown sites off the Florida coast. Mission managers had been targeting a Saturday night undocking prior to the delay.
“Concluding a weather briefing ahead of today’s planned undocking, the NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX teams elected to cancel today’s undocking attempt due to a low-wind daytime trough that has been causing marginally strong winds at the sites. splashdown,” NASA said. officials wrote in an update on Saturday. “The Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) crew is now aiming to undock from the International Space Station at 8:55 p.m. EDT on Sunday, April 24.”
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SpaceX’s Ax-1 mission launched on April 8 to carry four commercial astronauts for Axiom Space, three of them paying passengers, on a short trip to the station. The crew includes Commander Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut; and paying passengers Larry Connor, an American businessman; Mark Pathy, Canadian businessman; and Israeli investor and businessman Eytan Stibbe.
Connor, Pathy and Stibbe are paying $55 million each for the flight. During their journey, Ax-1 astronauts conducted a series of experiments, helped mint NFTs on the station, conducted educational outreach activities, and enjoyed the spaceflight experience.
The Ax-1 mission was initially expected to last around 10 days, eight of them on the space station, but its duration was extended after weather concerns prevented a planned undocking on Tuesday (April 19). If the Ax-1 Dragon capsule can undock on Sunday night, it is expected to splash down off the coast of Florida around 1 pm EDT (1700 GMT) on Monday, April 25.
Ax-1 undocking delays have caused a minor traffic jam for the next professional NASA crew to visit the space station. SpaceX is set to launch that new crew on the Crew-4 mission on Tuesday (April 26) from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The launch of the Crew-4 astronauts on a different SpaceX Dragon spacecraft has been on hold since mid-April due to the Ax-1 mission (which is currently using the Crew-4 mission docking port on the station) and delays with a NASA Artemis. 1 space launch system fueling test that caused a ripple effect of schedule changes at the Kennedy Space Center for Ax-1 and Crew-4 earlier in the month.
NASA and SpaceX also plan to return four more professional astronauts from the Crew-3 mission to the space station after Crew-4 launches in a third Dragon capsule.
If all goes well, NASA will broadcast Ax-1 crew undocking operations on Sunday, beginning with the closing of the hatch between the Dragon and the station at 6:30 pm EDT (22:30 GMT). Undocking coverage will begin at 8:30 pm EDT (0030 GMT). You can watch both activities live, courtesy of NASA TV.
Axiom Space will provide a live webcast of the splashdown itself, starting at 12 pm EDT (1600 GMT) on Monday.
Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@espacio.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. follow us @Spacepointcom, Facebook Y Instagram.
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