SpaceX continues to equipment up for its subsequent astronaut project.That flight, referred to as Ax-3, is scheduled to release from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy House Middle in Florida on Jan. 17, sending 4 folks to the World House Station (ISS). The Dragon pill that can lift the ones other folks to the orbiting lab and again has now arrived at Pad 39A’s hangar, SpaceX introduced these days (Jan. 12) in a publish on X that featured pictures of the spacecraft in its new atmosphere.Comparable: Axiom House names Ax-3 astronaut workforce for SpaceX project to ISS
Some other shot of the Ax-3 Dragon arriving on the Pad 39A hangar. (Symbol credit score: SpaceX by means of X)Ax-3 is the 3rd project to the ISS arranged via Houston corporate Axiom House. Like its two predecessors, which introduced in April 2022 and Might 2023, Ax-3 will make use of SpaceX {hardware} — the Falcon 9 rocket in addition to the Dragon pill.Ax-3’s workforce is composed of former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría; Italian Air Power Col. Walter Villadei, who additionally flew to suborbital house with Virgin Galactic in June 2023; Marcus Wandt of the Eu House Company; and Alper Gezeravcı, who will turn into the primary citizen of Turkey to achieve house. López-Alegría, who now works for Axiom, will command the project. (NASA calls for that each personal crewed project to the ISS be led via a former company astronaut.) He is a twin Spanish-American citizen, giving Ax-3 an remarkable world taste.”The Ax-3 project will likely be transformational, because it fosters partnerships out of doors the assemble of the ISS, and positions Eu international locations as pioneers of the rising business house trade,” López-Alegría mentioned in an Axiom remark in September 2023, when the crewmembers have been introduced.Ax-3 would be the twelfth astronaut project for SpaceX. Along with the 2 Axiom flights, Elon Musk’s corporate has introduced 8 crewed missions for NASA (together with the Demo-2 check flight in 2020) and the personal Inspiration4 effort. All of those missions visited the ISS apart from Inspiration4, on which Dragon flew freely in Earth orbit.One SpaceX project stays on the orbiting lab — the four-person Group-7, which introduced ultimate August and is scheduled to go back to Earth subsequent month.
