The four astronauts who participated in the private space mission Ax-2 returned to Earth from the ISS today at 06:04 Kyiv time (03:04 GMT), completing a ten-day trip that included eight days on the space station. The capsule, named Freedom, was floated in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida.
The mission was carried out by SpaceX on behalf of Houston-based Axiom Space. This is the second private mission to the ISS organized by the company. Ax-1 was launched in April 2022. The previous mission was the first flight to the ISS with a fully “private” team.
The Ax-2 commander was Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who now works as the head of manned spaceflight at Axiom Space. The second astronaut, John Shoffner, made his fortune in international telecommunications projects, and Saudi Arabia paid for the flight of Rayyanah Barnawi, a fighter pilot in the Saudi Air Force, and Ali AlQarni, the first Saudi female astronaut and biologist.
Prior to that, only Prince Sultan bin Salman Al Saud, who took part in the Discovery shuttle flight back in 1985, had flown into space from Saudi Arabia. Another remarkable fact about the crew is that Whitson has spent more time in space than any other American or any other woman (even before the flight, her personal “counter” had 665 days).
If all goes according to plan, more SpaceX Dragons will be sent to the ISS in the near future.
For example, this Saturday (June 3), a robotic version of the capsule with a cargo mission to the orbital laboratory is scheduled to be launched. And Crew Dragon Endurance will deliver four people to the ISS as part of the SpaceX Crew-7 mission for NASA, which is scheduled to launch in August.
*You can see the broadcast of the landing in the header of the article.
