![]() Barnawi is a biomedical researcher, and she has a decade of cancer-stem cell experience. Alqarni is a former Royal Saudi Air Force fighter pilot and is an inaugural member of the Saudi National Astronaut Program, according to Axiom Space. They are mission specialists Ali Alqarni and Rayyanah Barnawi. The other half of Ax-2 comes from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Shoffner also participates in motorsports. According to Axiom’s website, Shoffner has accumulated more than 8,500 flight hours, and has performed numerous skydives. He is an aviation hobbyist and thrillseeker. Shoffner formed the fiber optics company Dura-Line in the 1980s, and retired from his role as CEO in 1997. Ax-1 seats reportedly sold for $55 million. Axiom has not disclosed the amount Shoffner gave for his seat. He is the only member of Ax-2 to have paid for this ticket. Like his Ax-1 predecessors, Shoffner flies as an elevated space tourist. The other American onboard Ax-2 is John Shoffner. During Tuesday’s press conference, Whitson said she designed Ax-2’s training to reflect short-duration missions like those of Shuttle, rather than the long-duration mission training of current astronauts on the ISS. She retired from NASA in 2018.Īs commander and the only veteran spacefarer of the mission, Whitson played a big role in training the crew. record for cumulative time spent in space, according to the space agency. As a NASA astronaut, Whitson spent a total of 665 days in space. Axiom Space Who is the Axion Mission 2 crew?Īx-2 will be Whitson’s fourth spaceflight mission. The Ax-2 crew: (L-R) Peggy Whitson, Rayyanah Barnawi, John Shoffner, Ali Alqarni. And so we are using these missions to optimize for that future mission in space.” “And that will expand our capability to do commercial space and to have more and more people available, have more and more different science and payloads coming from all over the world. We plan to have the first module up in late 2025,” Whitson said. “We want to be able to have a commercial space station. In addition to her role as Ax-2 commander, she is Axiom Space’s Director of Human Spaceflight. “This Axiom 2 mission is just a precursor for where we’re headed,” Whitson said during a Tuesday press conference. ![]() Then, they will return to Earth with a splashdown at sea. There, they will help conduct biomedical experiments, and live chat with classrooms on Earth. The mission will last 12 days after launch, with ten of those days spent inside the ISS. They will launch with a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule atop a reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. What is Axiom Mission 2?Īx-2 comes a year after Axiom Space flew the first-ever private mission to the ISS, Axiom-1 (Ax-1).Īx-2 will see commander Peggy Whitson, Ax-2 pilot John Shoffner, and Ax-2 mission specialists Ali Alqarni and Rayyanah Barnawi reach the ISS. To that end, Axiom Space has been sending astronauts on short missions to space.Īx-2’s launch is currently set for Sunday, at 5:37 p.m. The Houston-based company is on a quest to place the first private space station in orbit around Earth. As NASA is doubling down on its exploration of the Moon and beyond, the space agency seeks to retire the veteran orbiting laboratory.Īxiom Space is a leading contender to build a commercial replacement for the ISS. These may be the final years of the International Space Station (ISS). The mission, called Axiom 2 (Ax-2), will carry a history-making NASA astronaut, a businessman from Tennessee, and the first two Saudi nationals to reach space since 1985. In total, NASA's Shuttles traveled 537,114,016 miles over the course of 134 flights.This weekend, Axiom Space will send its second crew to Earth orbit. Both the Challenger and Columbia Shuttles and their crews were lost in accidents in 19, respectively. The Shuttle's orange external tank held tanks filled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.Īfter lifting a number of satellites into orbit, including the Hubble Space Telescope, and facilitating the construction of the International Space Station, NASA's Space Shuttle program ended in 2011. The Space Shuttle's three RS-25 engines and two solid rocket boosters generated 7.8 million pounds of thrust and could hoist a maximum payload of 55,250 pounds into orbit. The 184-foot-long Space Shuttle was designed to carry seven passengers and could haul up to NASA ordered a total of five Space Shuttle orbiters: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavor. ![]() NASA's Space Shuttle, which consisted of a crew-carrying orbiter, an external tank, and two solid rocket boosters, was the world's first reusable spacecraft. The space shuttle Discovery, mission STS-131, launches in April, 2010. ![]()
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