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Axiom’s next commercial manned mission to ISS delayed until 2025

Axiom’s next commercial manned mission to ISS, dubbed Ax-4, which had been targeting an October 2024 launch date, has now been delayed until 2025 because of “required interagency approval processes.”

NASA’s only announcement describing the delay was a tweet on X, which stated the following:

The Ax-4 crew members are pending approval to fly to the orbiting lab by the Multilateral Crew Operations Panel.

Neither Axiom nor NASA provided further comment or explanation. The mission will fly three passengers from India, Poland, and Hungary and be commanded by Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who now fulfills that role for Axiom. Since the three passengers are all government astronauts, it is possible that the bureaucracies from all three nations, plus NASA and its ISS partners, are entangled in negotiations far more complex than necessary.

This situation highlights quite clearly why both billionairs Jared Isaacman and Chun Wang have signed on with SpaceX to flight orbital missions — avoiding a docking with ISS — that require no permissions from NASA. Wang for example announced his deal yesterday, for a flight that is targeting a launch before the end of the year. Though that schedule is tight and might not be met, it appears the mission will likely fly before the Axiom one, which has been planned now for quite awhile.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

4 comments

  • Richard M

    I admit that on all evidence, working with NASA generally and ISS management specifically is frustrating and even lifespan-shortening.

    That said, when I heard that the two ISRO astronauts had only left to begin training in Houston this month, I seriously wondered if there was going to be sufficient training time for a 4Q mission – even if the mission was only 10-14 days. There are a lot of moving parts in the ISRO-NASA venture here – some of which are still not visible to the public as of yet – and I wonder if that did not impel NASA to lean on Axiom to push the mission to the right to allow time to properly prepare ISRO for what I assume is going to be an unusually substantive and high profile visit to ISS.

    The other consideration is ISS vehicle and EVA scheduling, and I wonder if it was getting to be too tight this fall.

    I think we all can’t wait to see commercial stations become operational realities in orbit, given how it is sure to open up a lot more in the way of flexibility and opportunities for emerging sovereign and commercial space players hoping to do crewed space activities on orbit.

  • Dick Eagleson

    Richard M,

    I don’t disagree with any of that but the real horsefly in the ointment is Starliner and what to do about it. No 4Q ISS schedule can be realistically made without a decision about Starliner. Last week, NASA strongly implied said decision would be forthcoming this week. Now, while I would not characterize it as a full incremental kicking of the can down the road, NASA seems to be, at the very least, toe-nudging the decision into next week – if then. No one can be certain what the elastic limit of NASA’s definition of “by mid-August” is other than that the rubber band will certainly snap if Starliner’s fate is still undecided come Sept. 1.

  • All: We must not forget that there is an election coming up, and the Democrats who control Washington and want to win will allow nothing to happen that could hurt their chances. We must assume people in the White House are now in control and are the ones who will make the decision about Starliner’s return.

  • mkent

    I think the far bigger issue is that the crew was just finalized last week, particularly the Indian pilot, and none of the crew other than Peggy has any spaceflight experience.

    October is just two months away. That means that in that time the crew needs generic astronaut training, generic ISS training, and the Indian crewman needs Dragon pilot training. On top of that, India needs to design flight experiments and experimental apparatuses, work out their interfaces with ISS systems, build the devices, acquire the materials to experiment on, and everything needs to pass ISS safety reviews.

    Two months just isn’t enough time to develop a substantive flight. The over-the-poles flight is basically a stunt — a pretty cool one as far as stunts go — and even that will take at least four months to set up. Don’t be surprised if that flight slips to June.

    As we see with Polaris Dawn, substantive flights take more time to prepare than tourist flights.

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