A few hours ago, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft was launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center on the Axiom Mission 3, or simply Ax-3, mission. After about twelve minutes, it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage. It will spend about 14 days in orbit, almost all of which will be docked at the International Space Station. It also serves commercial purposes in a collaboration between SpaceX, Axiom Space, and various companies and national space agencies to access the Station for the purpose of conducting tasks useful for the development of new technologies and for scientific research.
The four crew members of the Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft are:
Michael López-Alegría. Born on May 30, 1958, in Madrid, Spain, he grew up in California and was a naturalized American. A super-veteran of space missions, he already commanded the Ax-1 mission in April 2022.
Walter Villadei. Born on April 29, 1974, in Rome, Italy, he is a colonel in the Italian Air Force. In June 2023, he was part of the suborbital flight crew of the VSS Unity on Virgin Galactic’s Galactic Flight 01. He’s on his first mission in orbit.
Alper Gezeravci. Born on December 2, 1979, in Mersin, Turkey, he’s a pilot in the Turkish Air Force and studied electronic engineering. This is his first space mission.
Marcus Wandt. Born on September 22, 1980, in Hammarö, Sweden, he was a pilot in the Swedish Air Force and later became a test pilot. In 2022, he was selected as a reserve astronaut of Group 4 of ESA astronauts, and for this reason, he participates in the Ax-3 mission also as an ESA astronaut. This is his first space mission.
Michael López-Alegría has dual citizenship and was born in Spain and for this reason the Ax-3 mission is the first space mission whose crew is all European. The arrival at the International Space Station of the Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft, on its third mission, is scheduled for tomorrow around 4.19 UTC.
These commercial missions offer the possibility of expanding access to space. Although the astronauts of the Ax-3 mission will spend less than two weeks on the International Space Station, they will have the opportunity to conduct many experiments. In this case, many of them are Italian but Axiom Space allows astronauts and experiments to be brought on board the Station also to nations that are not connected to the space agencies that run it. This expands the possibilities for conducting research that exploits the microgravity condition.
