The de-docking of the world’s first fully private crew from the International Space Station has been postponed from Saturday (23) to this Sunday (24).
All because strong winds were forecast at dive sites off the coast of Florida, in the United States. “At the conclusion of a meteorological briefing ahead of Saturday’s planned de-docking, teams from NASA, Axiom Space and SpaceX chose to delay the de-docking attempt due to a daytime low wind trough that has been causing strong winds at the landing sites. ,” NASA said.
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Weather permitting, the Ax-1 crew is expected to close the hatch around 5:45 p.m. EDT this Sunday (24) to return to Earth in the SpaceX Dragon Endeavor spacecraft with a landing off the coast of Florida at approximately 12:00 p.m. Monday (25th).
The Ax-1 astronauts launched into space on April 8 aboard a Crew Dragon capsule atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría is the commander of the mission, which also includes Canadian philanthropist Mark Pathy, as well as Israeli businessman Eytan Stibbe and businessman and pilot Larry Connor.
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Three of the mission’s four crew Ax-1 were received by members of the International Space Station (ISS) as “honorary astronauts”, as they are civilians with no spaceflight experience who will be staying in the orbital structure for days.
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“I must say that this is really a unique experience”, said the commander during a broadcast with his fellow travelers and members of Expedition 67 – the current occupants of the ISS. “I don’t even know how to begin to describe what it was like to be inside Crew Dragon for the last day and a half, seeing these people’s faces light up.”
The commander then announced the recognition of his crewmates as honorary astronauts: “there is a tradition that when you cross a certain border – and that border is debatable, but in the US, it is about 80 km – you becomes an astronaut by the altitude reached, and that’s what happened to these three people, for the first time, yesterday [sexta-feira, 8]”, he commented, then handing over pins that prove the conquest of civilian travelers.
When he mentioned the term “debatable”, López-Alegria referred to to the limit established for what it consists of “traveling to space”. Explaining: the international consensus states that the so-called “Linha de Kármán” – 100 km above the Earth’s surface – is the boundary that separates our planet from space. However, the US has a lower limit than this, at about 80 km altitude.
This demarcation generates some debates about whether or not someone is an astronaut – this was the point of debate about Jeff Bezos, founder of the Amazon group and the aerospace company Blue Origin, have or not the officially recognized honor, when traveling with the New Shepard Ship in July 2021.
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In other words, it is likely that the NASA recognize the three crew members as astronauts – it was the American agency that brokered the flight operation with Axiom Space and SpaceX, owner of Crew Dragon. Whether this will be recognized internationally, however, is another story. One to be seen later on.
The crew of honorary astronauts of the Ax-1 mission conducted several researches aimed at various fields, but mostly speaking, the idea is to work in health studies, thanks to Axiom Space’s partnership with several US hospital entities. Another facet of the research will be the study of technologies for Axiom itself.
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