WASHINGTON — As Axiom Space gears up for its third private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, the company says it has refined the training needed to effectively carry out those missions.
Axiom Space is preparing for its Ax-3 mission, scheduled to launch as soon as January on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft to the ISS. The mission will be commanded by former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría with three customers on board: Walter Villadei of Italy, Alper Gezeravcı of Turkey and Marcus Wandt of Sweden.
During a briefing about the mission Oct. 16, López-Alegría and his crewmates said the training for the projected two-week mission is going well, incorporating lessons from the company’s first two missions, including Ax-1 that López-Alegría commanded in 2021.
“It has changed in a fairly significant way,” he said of the training for Ax-3. “We have learned, from the two missions that have preceded this one, how to really optimize the training.” He noted that the training for Ax-1 included activities that “probably weren’t relevant” for the mission and didn’t emphasize “ops products,” or the ability of the crew to manage their time while on the station.
He said that his schedule of experiments would be reduced compared to Ax-1 to give him more time to assist his crewmates and reduce their reliance on the professional astronauts on the station. The company followed a similar approach on the Ax-2 mission in May, commanded by former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, and that worked well, he said.
He said SpaceX training for Crew Dragon has become more efficient as well. “I feel like we are asymptotically getting towards that perfect answer, and I would say we are very close to it by the time we did the training on Ax-3.”
Another factor that has helped in the training is that all four members of the crew have backgrounds as military pilots, with Gezeravcı and Villadei active members of their…
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