Bad Weather Delays Return Of First All-Private SpaceX Astronaut Mission
MIAMI (CBSMiami/CNN) -- The return of SpaceX's first all-private astronaut crew from the International Space Station is delayed at least a day.
The group was slated to undock from the ISS aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Tuesday night, but the company announced via Twitter that its opted to push back the attempt due to "unfavorable weather conditions."
The four-person crew includes a former NASA astronaut and three paying customers.
The 12-day multimillion-dollar mission, dubbed AX-1 was backed by Axiom Space, a Texas-based start-up that takes flights to the space station for anyone who can afford it.
It's the first all-private mission to the ISS that didn't include at least one active member of a government astronaut corps.
The three paying customers completed about 15 weeks of training before the flight. Though they do not have to worry about piloting their spacecraft, as the Crew Dragon is fully autonomous, they went through extensive studying of the capsule's design, prepared for all sorts of emergency scenarios, and completed zero-gravity test flights to prepare them for space, much as professional astronauts do.
During their stay on the space station, the group stuck to a regimented schedule, which included about 14 hours per day of activities, including scientific research that was designed by various research hospitals, universities, tech companies and more. They also spent a fair amount of time doing outreach events by video conferencing with children and students.
It's not clear how much this mission cost. Axiom previously disclosed a price of $55 million per seat for a 10-day trip to the ISS, but the company declined to comment on the financial terms for this specific mission beyond saying in a press conference last year that the price is in the "tens of millions."
The mission is made possible by very close coordination among Axiom, SpaceX, and NASA, since the ISS is government-funded and operated.
NASA has revealed some details on how much it'll charge for use of its 20-year-old orbiting laboratory.
Food alone costs $2,000 per day, per person, in space. Getting provisions to and from the space station for a commercial crew is another $88,000 to $164,000 per person, per day. For each mission, bringing on the necessary support from NASA astronauts will cost commercial customers another $5.2 million, and all the mission support and planning that NASA lends is another $4.8 million.
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