![]() What sets Axiom’s flight apart from previous trips with private citizens to low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station is that it won’t just be a single paying customer accompanied by a group of professional astronauts, said Derek Hassman, Axiom Space’s operations director. The Ax-1 crew will be the first private, all-civilian mission to the International Space Station. It’s also just the latest example of how human spaceflight - once limited to governments and their space agencies - is now flourishing as a commercial enterprise. The launch followed a pair of high-profile trips to suborbital space last year by billionaire entrepreneurs Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos. It is, however, the first time an all-civilian crew will visit the space station, marking a key breakthrough for both space tourism and the rapidly expanding commercial spaceflight industry. Instead of just reading about facts, we had an up close and personal view of artifacts like Kansas Astronaut Joe Engle’s X-15 flight suit, Apollo space suits, Apollo 11 Moon rock and the XLR99 rocket engine from the X-15 program. That milestone was set last year when SpaceX launched four private citizens on a three-day orbital joyride aboard the company’s Crew Dragon capsule. What sets the Cosmosphere Space Museum apart from other museums weve visited is the significant artifacts in each gallery. The Axiom mission, know as Ax-1, isn't the first time an all-civilian crew has flown to space. ![]() "That was a hell of a ride," crewmember Michael López-Alegría, a retired NASA astronaut who now serves as the vice president of business development for Axiom Space, radioed to mission controllers after reaching orbit.
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