The American space company Axiom space has everything ready for the launch this Wednesday of the first European commercial mission to the International Space Station (ISS), commanded by the Spanish-American Michael López-Alegría. Among other things, it will carry out scientific experiments on stem cells and cancer.
The so-called Axiom 3 mission or Ax-3 The launch is scheduled for 5:11 p.m. local time (11:11 p.m. Spanish peninsular time) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in central Florida, USA.
You will travel with Alegría, the Italian pilot Walter Villadei and two mission specialists: the Turk Alper Gezeravci – the first citizen of this country to fly into space – and the Swede Marcus Wandt the European Space Agency (ESA).
According to NASA, it is the first time that the crew, which will be on the ISS for 14 days, is made up entirely of Europeans.
The four crew members of the Ax-3 mission. / EFE/ Axiom space
Ax-3 aims to help usher in a new era of privatized use of the ISS, which will bring advances in biomedicine and other fields while enabling the development of a strong and sustainable market in the world low Earth orbit (LEOin English) by promoting microgravity research.
The four astronauts take responsibility more than two dozen investigations sponsored by the Space Station National Laboratory, many of which focus on the life sciences.
Dragon capsule on a Falcon 9 rocket
Ax-3, the first manned commercial mission sponsored by ESA, will launch in a Dragon Capsule powered by a rocket Falcon 9both from the company SpaceX by Elon Musk.
The ship will arrive at the space station approximately 36 hours after launch. The capsule is scheduled to dock with the ISS on Friday, January 19, at 11:15 a.m. (Spanish Peninsula Time). ESA will broadcast and report on these phases.
The so-called Muninn Project of the European astronaut Marcus Wandt It officially begins as soon as I walk through the hatch. His colleague Andreas Mogensen, a Danish astronaut also from ESA, will welcome him as commander of the space station. It will be the first time that two Scandinavians live and work together in space.
Cancer and the Spaceman's Resistance
Overall, the astronauts' mission is to use the unique LEO environment to better understand a variety of biological processes, including the effects of space travel on the human body, the mechanisms behind certain diseases, and how research can be done with them bypasses mother cells can contribute to the development of new therapies.
Specifically, López-Alegría explained at a press conference, two studies with stem cells are being carried out by the Sanford Stem Cell Institute (SSCI) of the University of California, San Diego, based on studies carried out on previous Axiom Space missions and beyond research , which was previously sponsored by the ISS National Laboratory.
One of them will study Tumor organoids in microgravity to detect early warning signs of cancer and to better predict and treat the disease.
The other will evaluate the changes in the Blood enzymes from astronauts during and after space travel to better understand their role in health and disease.
The results could help with identification new therapies and new ways to fight and treat cancerpossibly in the pre-cancerous stage.
López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut, had previously commanded Axiom's first commercial mission, Ax-1, in 2022, which spent 17 days on the space station. It's been two weeks now.
According to the Houston, Texas-based company, this is a new era of opportunity for more countries to join the international space community and gain access to low Earth orbit Advance exploration and research in microgravity.
European astronauts have indicated that they are already physically and mentally ready for this mission, which they say represents a new space chapter for this continent.