Four Europeans have launched the third private mission to the International Space Station. The Spanish-born former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, the Italian Walter Villadei, the Swede Marcus Wandt and the Turk Alper Gezeravci took off from the Cape Canaveral cosmodrome in the US state of Florida aboard a “Crew Dragon” from the private space company SpaceX. Gezeravci is the first Turkish citizen to fly into space.
The four private astronauts are expected to stay on board the ISS for around two weeks and carry out numerous experiments there. The trip was organized by the private space company Axiom Space in collaboration with NASA and SpaceX – the company owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk. According to media reports, the passengers pay around 50 million euros each for the trip.
Already two private missions before
The company Axiom Space, founded in Houston, Texas, in 2016 by former NASA manager Michael Suffredini and Iranian-American businessman Kam Ghaffarian, is also planning its own commercial space station in the future.
Axiom has already successfully sent two private missions into space: In April 2022, López-Alegría flew to the ISS together with the US entrepreneur Larry Connor, the Israeli entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe and the Canadian investor Mark Pathy. In May 2023, a man and a woman from Saudi Arabia flew for the first time – astronaut Rayyanah Barnawi and her colleague Ali Alqarni – as well as former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and ex-racing driver John Shoffner.
There had been individual space tourists on the ISS several times before, but the Axiom missions were the first completely private crews.
