Axiom, Houston’s private space company had established a business relationship with SpaceX to take the paying tourists to the ISS flying close to the second half of 2021. According to their deals, the Crew Dragon capsule would be used by SpaceX for ferrying 3 tourists along with an Axiom staff member so as to make sure that there isn’t any interference with the NASA crew members in their jobs of their orbiting lab. Axiom was chosen by NASA for building their space station’s first commercial destination module.
The capsule was originally developed by Elon Musk’s company for taking astronauts to space from the US and its first manned flight is in collaboration with NASA is expected to take place between April and June. It is also intended in taking paid astronauts outside the Earth expanding the spacecraft uses. It has even planned of collaborating with Space Adventures as they signed a deal in February of taking tourists on a free flying trip to orbit the Earth at an altitude of 2-3 times to that of the ISS.
The Axiom mission is said to be lasting for 10 days with 2 of them meant for departure and arrival. There is no such any news regarding the ticket price.
Axiom had previously said that a ticket would cost $55M per seat and one had already registered its seat, as posted by The New York Times. According to NASA, as claimed in 2019 when they announced of it’s opening up of the station to the private astronauts; they said that it would cost a tourist $35k per night.
Michael Suffredini, Axiom CEO who led NASA’s ISS plan for 10 years stated “This history-making flight will represent a watershed moment in the march toward universal and routine access to space. This will be just the first of many missions to ISS to be completely crewed and managed by Axiom Space — a first for a commercial entity. Procuring the transportation marks significant progress toward that goal, and we’re glad to be working with SpaceX in this effort.“
