In the most recent mission of its kind, which was fully funded by Texas-based startup business Axiom Space, a four-person crew that included Turkey’s first astronaut arrived at the International Space Station early on Saturday for a two-week stay.

The Axiom four took off in a rocketship on Thursday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and met up approximately 37 hours later.

Since they were involved in the first two Axiom trips to the space station since 2022, Elon Musk’s SpaceX was contracted by Axiom to supply, launch, and operate the Crew Dragon vessel and the Falcon 9 rocket that lifted it into orbit.

NASA’s mission control operation in Houston is in charge of the astronauts once they arrive at the space station.

A live NASA webcast demonstrated how the Crew Dragon autonomously connected with the ISS at 5:42 a.m. EDT (1042 GMT) while the two spacecraft were traveling about 250 miles (400 km) above the South Pacific.
Together, they were traveling at a hypersonic speed of roughly 17,500 miles per hour (28,200 km/h) around the earth in tandem.

After connection was completed, it was anticipated that it would take two hours or so to pressurize and inspect the sealed hatchway connecting the crew capsule to the space station so that the recently arrived astronauts could board the orbiting laboratory.

The Axiom-3 crew is scheduled to perform over 30 scientific experiments in microgravity over a period of approximately 14 days. Many of these studies will center on the impact of spaceflight on human health and disease.

Leading the global team was 65-year-old Spanish-born veteran NASA astronaut and Axiom executive Michael Lopez-Alegría, who was making his sixth trip to the space station. In April 2022, he oversaw Axiom’s maiden mission, which was the first all-private trip to the space station.

Colonel Walter Villadei, 49, of the Italian Air Force, is his second-in-command for Ax-3. Marcus Wandt, a 43-year-old Swedish aviator representing the European Space Agency, and Alper Gezeravcı, a 44-year-old Turkish Air Force veteran and fighter pilot who is completing his country’s first human spaceflight, complete the crew.

The existing regular crew of the space station, which consists of seven astronauts (two Americans from NASA, one each from Japan and Denmark, and three Russian cosmonauts), will greet them on board.

The Houston-based company Axiom was founded eight years ago and has made a name for itself serving wealthy private clients and foreign governments who want to launch their own people into orbit. The organization organizes, trains, and outfits clients for spaceflight at a cost of at least $55 million per seat.

Axiom is among the few firms constructing a commercial space station that is aimed to eventually take the role of the International Space Station, which NASA anticipates to be decommissioned in 2030.

After being put into orbit in 1998, the space station has been manned continuously since 2000 by a joint venture led by the United States and Russia, which also includes Canada, Japan, and eleven European Space Agency member nations.