ORLANDO, Fla. — The International Space Station is turning into a bit of a drive-thru with the goings and coming on three SpaceX Crew Dragons in the next two weeks.
First up is the return of the four Axiom Space crewmates on Crew Dragon Endeavour slated no earlier than April 20 after completion of the company’s historic mission for the first all-civilian trip to the ISS. NASA announced Friday the group’s time on the ISS was being extended by a couple of days, departing Tuesday and targeting a 7:19 a.m. splashdown Wednesday off the coast of Florida. The exact date and time will be dependent on weather at the recovery sites.
The AX-1 flight, which took off from Kennedy Space Center on April 8 brought three men who paid $55 million each to spend more than a week on the ISS performing science experiments, but also enjoying the view. They were led by a former astronaut Michael López-Alegría commanding the flight, but now as an employee of Axiom Space.
It will be the first time a Crew Dragon spacecraft will have completed three trips to space having been the first to take astronauts to the ISS on the Demo-2 mission in May 2020 and having also flown on the Crew 2 mission in 2021.
Crew Dragons have several landing zone options both in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Upon splashdown, the AX-1 crew will be flown back to KSC.
Their departure from the ISS will make room for the planned launch at 5:26 a.m. Saturday, April 23 of the Crew-4 mission, which is flying up on a new SpaceX Crew Dragon named Freedom. A flight readiness review is slated for Friday, but potential launch windows are available on April 24 and 25 as well.
“It’s not routine,” said Benji Reed, director of crew mission management for SpaceX, speaking after the AX-1 launch. “In fact, one of my colleagues was saying ... every time we do crew launches, he feels like it takes a few years off of his life. You know, it’s that serious. And we have to take this — we’ve called it a sacred responsibility before and it is.”
Still, SpaceX has become a reliable provider to NASA for both crew and cargo launches to the ISS.
“So much of it’s about awareness and it’s definitely about fighting that complacency,” Reed said. “Everything matters every single time.”
The Crew-4 flight looks to take up NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines and Jessica Watkins along with ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti of Italy for the fourth operational crew change under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
With their arrival for a six-month stay, that will allow the return of Crew-3 — NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron along with ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer of Germany. The quartet will climb back aboard Crew Dragon Endurance that flew up to the ISS last November. It’s slated to return about five days after Crew-4’s arrival.
The NASA-run side of the space station has room for two crew vehicles at a time.
With both private missions to the ISS as well as the normal crew rotations twice a year, the parking at the station is getting tight. Space is needed for the planned May 19 launch of the uncrewed reflight of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner for Orbital Flight Test 2 as well as the SpaceX cargo supply mission CS-25 coming up in June.
Boeing and SpaceX are supposed to be sharing the crew rotation flights to the ISS, but the Starliner has yet to make its first successful demonstration flight, having failed to dock with the ISS on its first try in December 2019. If the May trip is successful, a crewed demo flight could follow later this year.
SpaceX, meanwhile, will prep for the fall Crew-5 rotational trip to relieve the Crew-4 astronauts after their six-month stay while also serving up its four Dragon spacecraft for future civilian launches. AX-2 for Axiom Space could come in the fall as well.
Kathy Lueders, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Space Operations, said the station aims to have two Axiom missions a year, and joked with Axiom Space CEO Michael Suffredini, “When are you going get that port up there with a few extra docking ports for us?”
Axiom Space’s plans are to start building out their own add-on modules to the station beginning in 2024. Eventually, those added nodes will allow for dedicated docking space for its missions.
Until then the ISS will juggle cargo from SpaceX, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus and next year’s new player Sierra Space with its Dream Chaser spacecraft while also continuing Crew Dragon and Starliner dockings.
“This is one of those problems that we’ve been wanting to have for a while, and it’s good to see it staring us in the face,” she said.
