WASHINGTON, May 22 Falcon 9 launch vehicle lifts off from Cape Canaveral carrying Crew Dragon spacecraft with a commercial crew of four, the company SpaceX is streaming live.
The launch vehicle took off at 17:37 US East Coast time (00:37 Moscow time on Monday). It launches the Crew Dragon manned spacecraft into orbit, on this flight it goes under the name Freedom («Freedom»). The crew commander of the privately owned Axiom Space mission Ax-2 is veteran spaceflight ex-NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson. Together with her, race car driver and entrepreneur John Schoffner and two astronauts from Saudi Arabia — Ali al-Karni and the first Arab woman astronaut, Ryan Barnawi, will arrive in orbit.
«The first Saudis in nearly 40 years have gone into space since the kingdom sent the first Arab astronaut, Prince Sultan bin Salman, into orbit in 1985,» the Saudi Arabian Space Agency tweeted.
«Let the Liberty soar,» Whitson said during the final check of the crew's readiness. The former astronaut made her first flight in 2002, on account of her 665 days spent in space.
The Ax-2 launch uses the Falcon 9 first stage, which has already flown many times. As SpaceX said before launch, after separation, the first stage should land on a site near the launch site. This will be the first attempt to land the first stage on Earth, rather than a floating platform, since the launch of a manned spacecraft, the company said.
The docking of Crew Dragon with the ISS is scheduled for 9:24 a.m. EST on May 22 (4:24 p.m. Moscow time), NASA said. It is planned that tourists will spend about two weeks in orbit, during which, along with the regular crew of the ISS, they will participate in the scientific work of the station.
The first Axiom Space mission to the ISS, Ax-1, took place in April 2022. To date, a contract has also been signed for a third such flight, it is planned that it will take place no earlier than November 2023.