In 2019, NASA announced that the International Space Station has been opened for commercial business. Now, it seems many space tourists are ready to experience the world outside Earth and feel microgravity.
Now, space tourism firm Axiom Space has announced a “blockbuster deal” with Elon Musk’s SpaceX that will send private crews to the International Space Station (ISS) by 2023. Both companies already had a deal for a Dragon spacecraft flight with 3 non-astronauts and former NASA astronaut Micheal Lopez-Alegria that will take place in 2022. The new deal extends the deal to a total of 4 flights.
A new era of space tourism
Axiom has multiple private missions in the pipeline, but the announcement ties both companies more tightly as space tourism efforts are seeing a surge. “A new era in human spaceflight is here,” said Gwynne Shotwell, president, and COO, SpaceX.
SpaceX has already proved its Crew Dragon capsule’s mettle with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The space firm has launched 3 successful crewed missions with professional astronauts aboard.
The Axiom missions will ferry private crews to space. The company has also announced a mission with NASA which will take place in January 2022. The cost per seat for the mission is reportedly set at $55 million.
“All four crews will receive combined commercial astronaut training from NASA and SpaceX, with SpaceX providing training on the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, emergency preparedness training, spacesuit and spacecraft ingress and egress exercises, as well as partial and full simulations,” said SpaceX.
Space trips to become more frequent
SpaceX has always been a big endorser of space tourism. The company is also working on a space trip that will send a group of artists around the Moon using its highly advanced Starship spacecraft. Besides, Axiom has much bigger plans than just space tourism.
Axiom is planning to build its own space station that would start operations as an attachment to the ISS and later detach in 2024 to operate on its own by 2028. It could become a destination for space tourism in the future.
