First all-private astronaut team aboard space station undocks for flight home

WASHINGTON (AFP, REUTERS) - The first all-private astronaut team ever to fly aboard the International Space Station ( ISS) departed the orbiting outpost on Sunday (April 24) to begin a descent back to Earth, capping a two-week science mission hailed as a milestone in commercial spaceflight.

A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the four-man team from the Houston-based startup company Axiom Space undocked from the ISS at about 9.10pm EDT (9.10am Monday Singapore time) to embark on a 16-hour return flight, a live NASA webcast showed.

The Axiom astronauts, garbed in their helmeted white-and-black spacesuits, were seen strapped into the crew cabin shortly before the spacecraft separated from the station, orbiting some 420km above Earth. A couple of brief rocket thrusts then pushed the capsule safely clear of the ISS.

If all goes smoothly, the Dragon capsule, dubbed Endeavour, will parachute into the Atlantic off the coast of Florida on Monday around 1pm EDT (1am Tuesday Singapore time).

The four men - three who paid tens of millions of dollars each for the rare chance to take part in the mission, and former astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who holds dual US-Spanish citizenship - were originally scheduled to spend only eight days on the space station. But bad weather on Earth forced repeated delays in their return.

Private passengers Larry Connor, an American who heads a real estate company, Canadian businessman Mark Pathy and Israeli former fighter pilot and entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe had blasted off from Florida on April 8, reaching the ISS a day later.

Once on board, they conducted a series of experiments in cooperation with Earth-bound research centres, including on cardiac health and cognitive performance in low gravity, according to a Nasa blog.

Pathy in particular spent considerable time in the station's famous observation cupola photographing the Earth.

The mission was dubbed Ax-1 in a nod to Axiom Space, which served as a sort of space travel agency, paying SpaceX for providing two-way transportation and Nasa for the use of the orbiting accommodations.

Nasa has already given the green light, in principle, to a second mission: Ax-2. The departure of the Ax-1 crew will leave seven people on the ISS: three Americans, a German and three Russians.

Axiom, NASA and SpaceX have touted the mission as a turning point in the expansion of privately funded space-based commerce, constituting what industry insiders call the “low-Earth orbit economy”, or “LEO economy” for short.

Ax-1 marks the sixth human spaceflight SpaceX has launched in nearly two years, following four NASA astronaut missions to the ISS, plus the Inspiration 4 flight in September, which sent an all-civilian crew into Earth orbit for the first time, though not to the space station.

SpaceX, the private rocket company founded by Tesla electric carmaker CEO Elon Musk, has been contracted to fly three more Axiom astronaut missions to the ISS over the next two years. The price tag for such outings remains high.

Axiom charges customers US$50 million (S$69 million) to US$60 million per seat, according to Mo Islam, head of research for the investment firm Republic Capital, which holds stakes in both Axiom and SpaceX.

Axiom also was selected by NASA in 2020 to build a new commercial addition to the space station, which a US-Russian-led consortium of 15 countries has operated for more than two decades. Plans call for the Axiom segment to eventually replace the ISS when the rest of the space station is retired around 2030.