SpaceX to launch 3 paying customers, including ex-astronaut, to orbit.

Four people, including three paying customers, are scheduled to be launched by SpaceX for a week-long stay on the International Space Station. The second all-private mission to the orbiting outpost, organized by the Houston-based company Axiom, will take place on their trip.

As the first Saudi Arabian woman to travel to space, stem cell researcher Rayyanah Barnawi will make history on the AX-2 mission.

Sunday afternoon saw the start of a live YouTube stream of the launch. Liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is anticipated at 5:37 p.m. ET on Sunday, and coverage will start at 4:30 p.m. ET on NASA TV.

Officials will closely monitor the weather. Florida is now in the summer wet season, when daily thunderstorms frequently pass through the state, according to Brian Cizek, a weather representative with the US Space Force. The forecast for Sunday, he continued, is "pretty decent."

According to Cizek, the anvil coming off the top of those thunderstorms is the only thing we'll need to watch for.

SpaceX can try to relaunch the mission on Monday if it doesn't take off on Sunday, but there is an 80% chance that the weather will need to be more apparent. After that, there may be more significant delays because NASA needs to launch a SpaceX cargo mission.

This mission is the following in a series of trips that NASA and Axiom Space hope will keep the private sector interested in spaceflight, especially in low Earth orbit, where the space station is located.

Peggy Whitson, a 63-year-old former NASA astronaut who works for Axiom, will be in charge of the AX-2 crew. Whitson will lead a private spaceflight for the first time with the completion of this mission.

Three paying clients, including John Shoffner, an American who founded the Dura-Line Corp. hardware company and amassed a fortune in the global telecom industry, will join her.

Barnawi and Ali AlQarni, a fighter pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force, were also flown for a fee by Saudi Arabia.

"I am very honored and happy to be representing all the dreams and all the hopes of all the people in Saudi Arabia and all the women back home," said Barnawi, who spoke to reporters last week.

Seven astronauts formerly on board the space station will be joined by the Crew Dragon capsule's passengers when it docks with the orbiting laboratory on Monday.

Approximately eight days will pass while the AX-2 crew is stationed there. During that time, they will finish over 20 investigations and science projects, including stem cell and other biomedical research.

The AX-2 crew

Whitson will make his first trip back to the space station since 2017. She set a US record for the most total days spent in space thanks to her extensive time on the station.

Whitson has flown on NASA's space shuttle and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Still, she claimed that training for this mission was "obviously different" because it involved using SpaceX's Crew Dragon, which has only been carrying astronauts since 2020.

She said that one of my biggest challenges has been learning about this specific spacecraft. However, I've had a lot of fun doing it.

The second and third Saudis to travel to space will be AlQarni and Barnawi, respectively. The first was Prince Sultan bin Salman, who traveled in a NASA space shuttle for approximately a week in 1985.

Although the Biden administration and Congress have criticized Saudi Arabia for its record on human rights, relations between the US and Saudi Arabia are still strong.

AlQarni asserted that he views the opportunity for Arabs to travel to space as "great" and inspiring for the region.

It will "carry a strong message. During a news briefing on Tuesday, he said, "We are holding hands, working together for the betterment of humanity, and just trying to innovate. The future of private spaceflight Private individuals have previously paid to travel to space. In the early 2000s, Space Adventures arranged several such trips to the space station, reserving seats for wealthy thrill-seekers on Russian Soyuz rockets.

The future of private spaceflight

By collaborating with SpaceX to create a framework for transporting various clients to the space station, Axiom introduced that business model to the United States. In April 2022, the company's AX-1 mission became the first private passenger flight from US soil to the space station.

 Axiom aims to make these missions routine, increasing the accessibility of spaceflight to those who are not trained astronauts. During a pre-launch news conference, Axiom Space's chief of mission integration and operations, Derek Hassmann, stated that his company anticipates seeing more government-sponsored customers, similar to the AX-2 passengers from Saudi Arabia.

Government astronauts are, in fact, a crucial component of our business strategy, he added. Since this had never been done before, "early in the program, it needed to be clarified to us what the balance would be between private individuals and government astronauts. But we've realized the government market is crucial, so we're actively pursuing it.

 According to Axiom's leadership, commercial spaceflight will continue even after the space station is shut down in 2030, as predicted by NASA. One of the US businesses vying to build a brand-new, privately owned space station is Axiom. Supported by NASA, the initiative aims to increase local private-sector involvement so that NASA can concentrate on funding deep-space exploration.

The AX-2 crew will work on the space station alongside the professional astronauts, though their schedules will differ. They will rely on the crew on board to show them around once they arrive, including the kitchen and bathrooms. Hassmann claims that some areas will remain off-limits, such as the airlock where astronauts conduct spacewalks..