Four members of a special space mission have returned to Earth – DNOTICIAS.PT

Three businessmen and a former NASA astronaut landed Monday off Florida aboard a SpaceX capsule, after spending 15 days at the International Space Station as part of a special mission.

According to AFP, the capsule left the International Space Station (ISS) 16 hours ago. The ship withstood the dizzying descent to Earth, thanks to the heat shield, and then slowed down through the huge parachutes.

The Ax-1 mission, organized by the American company Axiom Space, was the first entirely private mission to reach the International Space Station.

The flight was supposed to take about a week, but adverse weather conditions kept the mission in orbit for nearly twice as long as planned.

Members of the Ax-1 mission are former astronaut Michael Lopez Allegria and businessmen Larry Connor (USA), Mark Bathy (Canada) and Eitan Stipe (Israel), who, according to US media, each paid $55 million to join the mission. .

The crew of the Ax-1 conducted scientific experiments, educational and commercial activities on the EEI.

Axiom Space was founded in 2016 with the goal of creating the first commercial space station, and its first module is expected to launch in 2024.

Prior to the Axiom space mission, SpaceX had already flown astronauts from NASA and its European counterpart, ESA, to the International Space Station, replacing the Russian long-distance transport provided by the Russian space agency Roscosmos’ Soyuz.

On April 2, Roscosmos announced it would make “concrete proposals” for when to end cooperation on the International Space Station, after Western counterparts refused to lift sanctions on Russian companies in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

On December 8, eccentric Japanese millionaire Yusaku Maezawa flew to EEI for a 12-day stay, thanks to a partnership between Roscosmos and Space Adventures, a US company that exclusively sells flights aboard the Soyuz spacecraft to the “home” of astronauts in orbit. ground .

The International Space Station is the result of a partnership between NASA, the European Space Agency, Roscosmos and their Canadian counterparts, the Canadian Space Agency and Japan’s JAXA.