Next Up: Axiom 3 Mission to Send Crew of 4 to the ISS

On Sunday night at 8:52PM local (EST) SpaceX launched the Starlink 6-37 mission, putting another 23 of the latest version satellites in orbit and starting their checkout.  We've been watching for the next "big event" launch, a manned launch, and the current schedule says Wednesday evening at 5:11 PM EST, at least a half hour before sunset.  The launch is the third flight for Axiom Space, and will carry a four man crew, all European, for a scheduled 14 day mission to the ISS to conduct experiments.  

The quartet includes Ax-3 mission commander and former NASA astronaut Michael "LA" López-Alegría, mission specialist Walter Villadei, who also flew aboard Virgin Galactic's Galactic 01 suborbital spaceflight as VIRTUTE 1 mission commander last summer, Turkey's soon-to-be first astronaut, Alper Gezeravcı and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut reserve member Marcus Wandt.
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Axiom Space is constructing its own habitation module to berth to the ISS, which it plans to build out and eventually detach to become its own private space station. Throughout development, crews from each of the company's commercially-funded missions to the ISS work, in part, toward helping Axiom reach that goal.

You might wonder how Michael López-Alegría could be both a former NASA astronaut and the Commander of an "all-European" crew.  LA is a dual citizen of Spain (his country of birth) and the USA.  He has over 40 years of aviation and space experience with the U.S. Navy and NASA in a variety of roles, including Naval Aviator, engineering test pilot, NASA astronaut, and commander of the International Space Station (ISS).

López-Alegría is currently the chief astronaut for Axiom Space and commanded the crew of Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1), the first fully private mission to the ISS in human history. He is a five-time astronaut, having flown on Ax-1, space shuttle missions STS-73, STS-92, and STS- 113, and Soyuz TMA-9 to and from the ISS, where he served as commander of Expedition 14. He holds NASA records for the most extravehicular activities (EVA) or “space walks” (10) and cumulative EVA time (67 hours, 40 minutes). He was elected to the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame as a 2020 inductee.

As always, this group of astronauts have very impressive sounding biographies.  Available to read at both Axiom's page and quoted largely at Space.Com. 

After Wednesday, the next manned launch is going to be the next crew rotation for ISS, called Crew-8, which Next Spaceflight is simply labeling as NET February.  After that, currently NET April, is the Polaris Dawn mission we've been talking about - the first private spacewalking mission.  In the hour long video of the SpaceX All Hands meeting I mentioned, Musk talks about substantial progress on the space suits and some changes to the Crew Dragon to increase performance in the critical task of opening a ship, losing all the air, and resealing properly after that.  Yes it has been done before.  Doing it wrong kills everyone on board.

A pretty Crew Dragon shot of the capsule used for  the Inspiration 4 mission in mid-September of '21.  SpaceX photo.