Four planned commercial spaceflights and a campus under construction in the Houston Spaceport are part of Axiom Space’s bet on a successful low-Earth-orbit manufacturing economy within a decade, according to CEO and co-founder Michael Suffredini
"The local economy is affected significantly because not only will there be jobs, but the amount of research and manufacturing that will take place over time will start to focus around the Houston area as well," Suffredini said. "There's a lot of testing and demonstration you have to do before you fly a system or [produce] a product, whatever that product might be."
Suffredini delivered his remarks at an April 6 press conference scheduled ahead of the May 8 launch date for Axiom Mission 2. The four-person mission will spend 10 days at the International Space Station researching the effects of microgravity and radiation on materials.
Ax-2 is the second of four flights performed in partnership with Austin-based SpaceX, which will provide the Dragon spacecraft carrying the crew. Data and results from the four missions will be used in the creation of Axiom Station, the company’s planned space station, which is intended to succeed the ISS.
“We do see quite a bit of growth around Axiom facilities as we start to supply more and more manufacturers, not so much researchers,” Suffredini said. “You’re going to see a lot of growth here.”
According to a February brief from NASA, the commercial low-Earth-orbit economy depends on private flights that can bring astronauts into space for tourism, commercial research and in-space manufacturing. Angela Hart, NASA’s program manager for commercial LEO development, said the market would be primed to explode in the next 10 years
“Our hope is to have operating commercial space stations by 2029 so we do not have a gap between the ISS [retiring] and these commercial stations,” Hart said. “Once that happens, you're gonna see another explosion of opportunity, as those space stations will be able to offer services and activities that would not be seen on a government platform.”
Hart also discussed NASA’s efforts to spark Houston’s space economy through the Johnson Space Center. In 2022, the agency partnered with the Ion, a Midtown incubator, to create a tech transfer center where startups can license NASA intellectual property for technologies.
“I think you're going to see that a lot of the companies that are supporting the International Space Station are broadening out into these other areas as well,” Hart said.
The Axiom Station is set to be assembled at the company’s 22-acre future headquarters at the Houston Spaceport, which will also house a training center for future astronauts. Axiom broke ground on the building last year.
While construction is underway, the company maintains a lease at a 146,000-square-foot former Fry's Electronics building as well as a separate facility to produce its spacesuits.
In preparation for Ax-2, the company partnered with local health care giant Houston Methodist to ensure the astronauts are physically conditioned. Axiom also consulted with Houston Methodist on the design of its new AxEMU spacesuit, which was produced under a $228.5 million contract from NASA.
On March 14, NASA also announced that Axiom Mission 3 will launch no earlier than November 2023 and is expected to spend 14 days docked to the space station. Axiom has partnered with SpaceX since 2021 for four commercial space missions, starting with last year's Axiom Mission 1.
The advances in Texas-based companies such as Axiom, SpaceX and Intuitive Machines (Nasdaq: LUNR) — which recently went public — led professional services firm PriceWaterCoopers to rank the Lone Star State first in the nation in aerospace investment in a recent report.
