Buy 10 get 7 free, the International Space Station "Double Fly" 17 days tour ends, 4 space tourists back to Earth.
On April 24, 2017, four space tourists from the all-private commercial manned space mission Ax-1 on the International Space Station returned to Earth safely on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, and the spacecraft left the space station at 21:10 EST on the 24th, and about 16 hours later, at about 13:00 EASTERN time on April 25, the spacecraft splashed down the Atlantic Ocean. The dragon spacecraft carries more than 200 pounds of scientific experiments and supplies that will be sent to the nearby Kennedy Space Center for further study.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 11:17 ET on April 8 to launch Ax-1, the first all-private manned space mission to the International Space Station, for Axiom Space, a start-up commercial space enterprise in the United States. Four space tourists, former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, American entrepreneur Larry Connor, Canadian investor Mark Passy, and Israeli businessman Eitan Stibby, boarded the International Space Station on April 9.
With weather at the landing site unfavorable for the spacecraft to return to Earth and avoiding a clash with Russia's spacewalk last week, the "space tour group" added 7 days to the original 10-day space trip, with 4 people spending 17 days in space, including 15 days on the International Space Station.
According to CBS, Axiom Space paid SpaceX for the flight, nasa for the assistance of space station resources and orbiting laboratory professionals. The agreed mission costs covered the possibility of launch and landing delays. According to SpaceNews, NASA and Axiom Space said that the mission agreement they reached included the possibility of delay, so Axiom Space would not charge extra for the 4 people to stay on the space station for more time.
In this "space tour group", Michael Lopez-Aleglia is also the vice president of Axiom Space, according to CNBC, the other 3 passengers are paid for by other organizations, and the 3 people have carried out research missions on behalf of other organizations, including cooperation with Canadian and Israeli space agencies, as well as health research at Mayo Medical Center, Cleveland Medical Center, and Montreal Children's Hospital. Axiom Space declined to disclose the cost of space travel for private astronauts, but NASA paid SpaceX $55 million per astronaut.
The Ax-1 mission is SpaceX's sixth manned flight to date, after four trips to the International Space Station for NASA and a three-day Inspiration 4 mission that sent four space tourists to an altitude of more than 500 kilometers. Since its first manned launch in May 2020, SpaceX has put a total of 22 astronauts into orbit.