Axiom Mission 3 (or Ax-3) is a planned

private spaceflight Private spaceflight is spaceflight or the development of spaceflight technology that is conducted and paid for by an entity other than a government agency. In the early decades of the Space Age, the government space agencies of the Soviet Un ...

to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...

. The flight, scheduled to launch no earlier than January 2024, and expected to last about 14 days, will be operated by

Axiom Space Axiom Space, Inc., also known as Axiom, is an American privately funded space infrastructure developer headquartered in Houston, Texas. Founded in 2016 by Michael T. Suffredini and Kam Ghaffarian, the company first flew a spaceflight in 2 ...

and be using a

Crew Dragon Dragon 2 is a class of partially reusable spacecraft developed and manufactured by American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, primarily for flights to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX has also launched private missions such as Ins ...

spacecraft.

Crew

The flight includes the first astronaut from Turkey, Alper Gezeravcı, from the Turkish Space Agency, and an astronaut from the

Italian Air Force , colours = , colours_label = , march = (Ordinance March of the Air Force) by Alberto Di Miniello , mascot = , anniversaries = 28 March ...

Marcus Wandt Marcus Wandt (born September 22, 1980) is a Swedish test pilot and member of the 2022 European Space Agency Astronaut Group. Pre-ESA Career From 2003 to 2014, Wandt was a fighter pilot in the Swedish Air Force. In 2004, he joined the Swedish ...

is the first member of the

2022 European Space Agency Astronaut Group The 2022 European Space Agency Astronaut Group is the latest class of the European Astronaut Corps. The selection recruited five "career" astronauts, 11 "reserve" and one "astronaut with a physical disability". It is the fourth European Space Agen ...

to receive a spaceflight mission, it is also "the first commercial spaceflight mission for an ESA-sponsored astronaut". A Swede, his mission is called "

Muninn In Norse mythology, Huginn (Old Norse: "thought"Orchard (1997:92).) and Muninn (Old Norse "memory"Orchard (1997:115). or "mind"Lindow (2001:186).) are a pair of ravens that fly all over the world, Midgard, and bring information to the god Odin. ...

" as it will overlap with Danish ESA astronaut

Andreas Mogensen Andreas Enevold Mogensen (born 2 November 1976) is a Danish engineer and ESA astronaut who is best known for being the first Dane to fly in space as part of the European Space Agency's iriss program. Mogensen has also been involved in a number of ...

's mission "

Huginn In Norse mythology, Huginn (Old Norse: "thought"Orchard (1997:92).) and Muninn (Old Norse "memory"Orchard (1997:115). or "mind"Lindow (2001:186).) are a pair of common raven, ravens that fly all over the world, Midgard, and bring information to t ...

Mission

The flight will lift off from

Launch Complex 39A Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) is the first of Launch Complex 39's three launch pads, located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida. The pad, along with Launch Complex 39B, were first designed for the Saturn V launch vehicle. T ...

Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968 ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

to dock with the International Space Station with an intended duration of two weeks.

References

{{Future spaceflights 2023 in spaceflight 2023 in the United States Future human spaceflights Axiom Space International Space Station Kennedy Space Center