Tag Archives: Anton Shkaplerov

Science

First Axiom Space ISS Mission: What to Know

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The Ax-1 crew inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
Photo: SpaceX

This Friday, a SpaceX rocket will attempt to blast off from Kennedy Space Center with four civilians on board. It’s the first wholly private mission to the ISS, in what’s poised to be a precedent-setting mission. Here’s what you need to know ahead of this historic launch.

The Ax-1 crew, which includes a retired NASA astronaut, will climb aboard a Crew Dragon capsule on April 8 and blast off at 11:17 a.m. EST atop a Falcon 9 rocket. Should all go as planned, the mission, managed by Houston-based Axiom Space, will serve as yet another important milestone in the ongoing privatization of space. Here are five things you should know about the Ax-1 mission.

It’s the first all-private mission to the ISS

Last year’s Inspiration4 mission will go down in history as being the first to send an all-private crew to space. Ax-1 is different in that the four crew members—all of whom are private citizens—will spend time aboard the International Space Station. That’s never been done before.

The closest thing, I suppose, was the Russian film crew that spent 12 days aboard the ISS last year to film scenes for a movie, but that mission, Soyuz MS-19, wasn’t exclusively private, as cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov took part as the commander. The four men who will take part in this new mission are Michael López-Alegría from the U.S. and Spain, Larry Connor from the U.S., Eytan Stibbe of Israel, and Mark Pathy of Canada.

Axiom did not respond to a question about how much, if anything, the crew members paid for their seats. A 2019 press release from the company mentioned a price tag of $55 million for private astronaut tickets.

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Axiom is a small company with big plans

Axiom Space, founded in 2016, had around 110 employees in February 2021, but it’s been expanding and has plans to reach 1,000 workers by the end of 2024. The company has close ties with NASA; Michael Suffredini, former NASA ISS program manager, serves as the company’s CEO, and Charles Bolden, former NASA administrator, works as an independent consultant.

Axiom has a long list of potential offerings, including the training of astronauts, managing private and national flights to the ISS, offering on-orbit manufacturing capabilities, developing space-based life and medical support systems, among other services related to the exploration and commercialization of space. Importantly, the company has plans to build a private space station (more on this is just a bit), which it’s positioning as a future cornerstone of its overall offering.

Ax-1 is a boys trip

López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut and Axiom vice president, will command Ax-1, while Connor, an entrepreneur and investor, will serve as the pilot. López-Alegría flew to space on four different occasions during his 20-year career at NASA, and he’s poised to become the first astronaut in history to lead both a civil and a commercial human spaceflight mission. Pathay and Stibbe, both investors, will serve as mission specialists.

The Ax-1 crew (from left to right): Larry Connor, Michael López-Alegría, Mark Pathy, and Eytan Stibbe.
Image: Axiom Space

All Ax-1 crewmembers are men, but former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson is serving as the mission’s backup commander. And on that note, Whitson is currently slated to command the Ax-2 mission, scheduled for early 2023.

This is a ‘precursor’ mission

Axiom describes Ax-1 as a “precursor” private astronaut mission. It’s the first of four proposed missions, all of which are stepping stones for the company as it looks ahead to the construction of its private orbital outpost, dubbed Axiom Station. Construction of the station is scheduled to begin in 2024; a succession of modules will be incrementally added to the Harmony node of the ISS. Upon the retirement of ISS in 2030, the space station will detach from the outpost to “form the world’s first free-flying, privately developed, internationally available space station—the central node of a near-future network of research, manufacturing, and commerce in LEO,” according to Axiom.

Depiction of Axiom Station attached to the ISS Harmony module.
Image: Axiom Space

The Ax-1 crew will spend 10 days in space, eight of which will be onboard the U.S. segment of the ISS. The crew will run scientific experiments, perform some commercial activities, and promote STEM education. The crew won’t have time to waste, as it plans on doing 25 different experiments in just 100 hours. A ground team stationed at Axiom Space Mission Control Center in Houston will provide around-the-clock support.

The mission is meant to bring us closer to space

The crew has partnered with several institutions to perform a series of cientific and technological experiments and tests. Some of them carry important implications for humans living on Earth, but they’re primarily geared toward enabling further space exploration. As Axiom explained in a news release: “Data collected in-flight will impact understanding of human physiology on Earth and in orbit as well as establish the utility of novel technologies that could be used for future human spaceflight pursuits and humankind on Earth.”

The EEG-enabled space helmet.
Photo: brain.space

A good example is the EEG-enabled helmet, which will be tested and operated by the Ax-1 crew. Working with Ben Gurion University, the team will record and analyze brain signals in an effort to spot potential neurological differences in humans while working in space. Ultimately, the goal is to provide future long-term space missions with an easy-to-use and comfortable helmet and to build an “accurate device for daily gauging for astronaut competence,” according to brain.space, the Israeli company behind the helmet.

The crew will also experiment with TESSERAE, or Tessellated Electromagnetic Space Structures for the Exploration of Reconfigurable, Adaptive Environments. This is futuristic stuff, as this tech could eventually result in self-assembling satellites. Named after Roman mosaics, modular TESSERAE are designed to connect to create larger structures, such as rooms and parabolic mirrors. During Ax-1, the team will test prototypes capable of sensing the quality of bonds between tiles.

Depiction of a future TESSERAE self-assembling space station in orbit around Mars.
Image: MIT Space Exploration Initiative/TU Dortmund Fraunhofer Institute

Collaborations involving the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, and Montreal’s Children Hospital will study the effects of microgravity on aging, heart health, spinal and brain tissue, chronic pain, and sleep disorders. The team will also “leverage the accelerated aging aspects of the microgravity environment to evaluate early pre-cancer and cancer changes in tumor organoids,” and test a new air purification system, among other tasks.

It all gets started on Friday, weather permitting. It took a while, but we’ve fully entered an era in which private individuals—albeit very privileged private individuals—can fly to low Earth orbit and use space as their personal playground and a place to do business. Hopefully they’ll keep the rest of us in mind.

Have a tip or comment for me about the spaceflight industry? Reach me at george.dvorsky@gizmodo.com.

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Science

Astronauts Forced to Take Shelter as Debris Cloud Threatens Space Station

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The International Space Station
Image: Roscosmos

All seven astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station are having to take shelter inside their respective spacecraft owing to the sudden appearance of a debris cloud in orbit, the source of which remains unclear.

Information is slowly trickling in, but we do know that the ISS is currently functioning normally and that all seven crew members are healthy and safe. The crew had to take shelter earlier this morning due to the sudden appearance of an orbiting debris field. The unexplained breakup of the defunct Russian satellite Kosmos-1408 is currently the leading candidate for the source of the orbiting debris cloud.

NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, Kayla Barron, and ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer are sheltering inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon docked to the ISS, while Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov, Pyotr Dubrov, and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei are inside a Soyuz capsule, reports Russian state-owned news agency TASS. The astronauts could use these spacecraft to safely return to Earth in the event the ISS is damaged by the debris.

A live feed of NASA mission control is available, allowing you to follow the events as they’re happening.

In a tweet, Roscosmos said the crew is “routinely performing operations according to the flight program,” and that the threatening “object” has “moved away from the ISS orbit.” By “object,” the Russian space agency is referring to the debris field. The “station is in the green zone,” Roscosmos added.

“Friends, everything is regular with us!,” tweeted Shkaplerov. “We continue to work on the program.”

Despite these words of reassurance, operations aboard the ISS are most certainly not back to normal. Mission controllers are continually providing countdowns of each debris field transit (i.e. the closest approach of the debris field to the ISS). At 10:32 a.m. ET, controllers provided instructions for the NASA crew to temporarily enter into the Columbus module to perform some quick tasks and to collect personal items should they have to remain inside Dragon overnight (a possible indication that this could take a while).

The debris field transits were happening about once every 93 minutes at first, but now they’re happening about once every 30 to 40 minutes. In an email, Harvard University astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell said that, assuming it’s a debris field caused by a broken-up satellite, “there will be a big error bar on whether there is risk to ISS, hence the caution.”

The source of the debris field remains unconfirmed, but its sudden appearance coincides with reports that Russia has conducted an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons test. In a tweet, Gunter Krebs, a physicist and editor of Gunter’s Space Page, said the target was an “old Soviet Tselina-D SIGINT satellite called Kosmos-1408 (1982-092A) launched in 1982, which has been dead for decades,” and that ”14 debris objects have been tracked.” But Krebs cautions: “So far no confirmation from official sources.”

U.S. Space Force “is aware of a debris-generating event in outer space” and is “working to characterize the debris field and will continue to ensure all space-faring nations have the information necessary to maneuver satellites if impacted,” tweeted space reporter Joey Roulette from the New York Times.

Today’s incident comes less than a week after the ISS had to make an emergency maneuver to evade potentially threatening space junk. In that case, it was a remnant of the Fengyun-1C weather satellite, which China deliberately destroyed in 2007 as part of an anti-satellite missile test. India did something similar in 2019, joining the United States, Russia, and China as countries that have tested anti-satellite weapons. Currently, the use of ASATs “occupy a gray zone” when it comes to international arms control, writes Talia M. Blatt from Harvard University.  

This is a developing story and we will update this article as we learn more.



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Science

Unlucky Delays Mean ISS Astronauts Could Return to Earth Before Their Replacements Arrive

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The (eventual) replacements: NASA’s SpaceX Crew-3, from left: Matthias Maurer, Tom Marshburn, Raja Chari, and Kayla Barron.
Photo: SpaceX

The International Space Station could be emptier than usual next week, should NASA decide to send four astronauts home prior to the arrival of the SpaceX Crew-3 mission.

I hope astronauts are a patient bunch, because it’s taking a while for the SpaceX Crew-3 mission to get off the ground. Launch of the brand new Endurance Crew Dragon capsule was supposed to happen on October 31, but ongoing weather problems and a minor medical issue involving a crewmember has resulted in a series of delays. Meanwhile, back at the orbital ranch known as the International Space Station, the Crew-2 team is preparing to return home. The lingering question right now is, will Crew-3 launch before or after Crew-2 says au revoir to the ISS?

“These are dynamic and complex decisions that change day by day,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said in a statement. “The weather in November can be especially challenging, so our goal is to move forward on the plan with the highest probability of mission assurance and crew safety.”

All dressed up but nowhere to go: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the launchpad, as photographed on October 27, 2021.
Photo: NASA/Joel Kowsky

Allow me to present to you the situation as it exists right now.

Crew-2, consisting of NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, could leave the ISS as early at 1:05 p.m. EDT on Sunday, November 7. They could also leave the next day, should the situation warrant. Departure of Crew-2 is dependent on several factors, including the readiness of the Crew Dragon capsule and recovery teams, along with favorable weather and ocean conditions (parachute-assisted splashdown is expected off the Florida coast).

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Should Crew-2 leave before Crew-3 arrives, that would leave just three Expedition 66 crew members aboard the ISS: Roscosmos cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei. If Crew-2 can’t leave the ISS on either Sunday or Monday (for whatever reason), that would set the stage for the launch of Crew-3 on Monday, November 8, at 9:51 p.m. EDT.

A launch window for Crew-3 exists for November 6 and 7, but NASA and SpaceX have chosen to forgo these dates on account of expected poor weather. Specific concerns have to do with high winds at the launch pad, the presence of cumulus clouds, risk of lightning, and unfavorable conditions down range should an in-flight abort be necessary.

Frustratingly, weather predictions for November 8 also do not look good. At the same time, NASA is still monitoring that minor (and undisclosed) medical issue involving one of the Crew-3 astronauts. The Crew-3 team consists of NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, and ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer.

“Mission teams will make a final decision on whether to prioritize Crew-3’s launch or Crew-2’s return in the coming days based on the likelihood of favorable conditions for a Crew Dragon splashdown or Crew Dragon launch,” NASA says. “NASA and SpaceX also are reviewing the time needed between launch or return operations.

Crew-2 launched on April 23 and arrived at the ISS the following day. Their Crew Dragon, Endeavour, has been in space for 195 days. That’s significant, because NASA has a requirement stating that the SpaceX capsule must be capable of staying in orbit for 210 days. “Additional analysis could allow the spacecraft to remain in orbit for longer, if necessary,” according to NASA.

Eventually—we think—the Crew-3 mission will launch. Once in space, the crew can sit back and relax, and even use the toilets with reckless abandon. For you see, Endurance has been fitted with upgraded toilets, which means the crew doesn’t have to worry about spilling their urine all over the place. The same cannot be said for the Crew-2 astronauts, as Endeavor’s toilet is still in the old configuration. Thankfully that shouldn’t pose a problem given the quick journey home.

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