Houston-based Axiom Space has selected four crew members for its Axiom Mission 2, the second privately funded mission to the International Space Station.
This will be the first mission including both private astronauts and those representing foreign governments, and the crew includes the first woman commander of a private space mission.
Peggy Whitson, the company’s director of human spaceflight and a former NASA astronaut, will lead the mission, joined by former aviator and entrepreneur John Shoffner as pilot. Ali AlQarni and Rayyanah Barnawi of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will serve as mission specialists — the two are members of Saudi Arabia’s inaugural astronaut program.
Whitson and Shoffner served as backup commander and pilot, respectively, on the company’s first mission, Axiom Mission 1, which was completed in April 2022.
Saudi Arabia signed a partnership with Axiom for two seats on the Ax-2 mission in September 2022 as part of its own ongoing space strategy.
The Ax-2 mission, which is targeted to launch this spring, will lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with the crew housed in a SpaceX Dragon craft onboard a Falcon 9 rocket. The astronauts will spend 10 days aboard the ISS completing unspecified science, outreach and commercial activities.
In addition to becoming the first woman commander of a private space mission, Whitson will have the chance to extend her record of the most cumulative time in space of any astronaut in the U.S. space program. Whitson’s previous missions to the ISS with NASA include Expedition 5 in 2002, Expedition 16 in 2007, and Expeditions 50 through 52 in 2016 and 2017.
In 2021, Axiom and SpaceX signed a partnership for four commercial missions, starting with last year's Ax-1 mission.
“Axiom Space’s second private astronaut mission to the International Space Station cements our mission of expanding access to space worldwide and supporting the growth of the low-Earth orbit economy as we build Axiom Station,” said Michael Suffredini, president and CEO of Axiom Space. “Ax-2 moves Axiom Space one step closer toward the realization of a commercial space station in low-Earth orbit and enables us to build on the legacy and achievements of the ISS, leveraging the benefits of microgravity to better life on Earth.”
Meanwhile, Axiom is expanding its Houston presence with its new headquarters at the Houston Spaceport. The 22-acre Space Flight and Assembly Headquarters will be used to train private astronauts and to produce the Axiom Station, which has been billed as the world’s first free-flying, internationally available, private space station. The headquarters broke ground in 2022 and is expected to be complete this year.
While the Spaceport project was underway, Axiom also leased a 146,000-square-foot former Fry’s Electronics building in Webster in June 2022.
NASA awarded a $228.5 million contract to Axiom in September to produce space suits for its upcoming Artemis III mission, which is tentatively planned for 2025.
