If everything goes as planned, a Falcon 9 of Spacex will take off Wednesday from Florida to the International Space Station. On board the Crew Dragon ship there will be a very particular nationalities cocktail.
Hungary goes free. In the AX-4 mission, operated by the American company Axiom Space, an astronaut of Poland and another of Hungary, two member countries of the European Space Agency will travel. The logical thing would be to think that both fly under the flag of ESA, but one of them will not.
While the Polish astronaut follows the “official” European path, Hungary has decided to go for free, hiring his own seat directly with Axiom Space and demonstrating that the rules of the game to go to space are changing at a vertigo speed, even in Europe.
Two roads to space. AX-4 will have four crew members on board. NASA’s legendary astronaut Peggy Whitson, now Axiom Space employee, will command the mission. The Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, recently selected for the Iso manned program, will serve as a pilot. The two mission specialists represent the curious European duality:
- The Polish Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski will travel two weeks to the International Space Station as a project astronaut of the European Space Agency. Its mission, baptized as “Ignis”, follows the traditional model: a national agency, the Polish Polyse, collaborates with ESA to take an astronaut to space. Poland did not do it since 1978, under the Soviet Interkosmos program
- Hungarian Tibor Kapu represents the Hungarian space office. His mission is called “Hunor” (Hungary to Orbit) and has been developed completely independent of ESA, although Hungary is a Member State. The Hungarian government signed an agreement directly with Axiom Space in 2023, managing its own program with a budget close to 100 million dollars. Hungary did not send anyone to space since 1980, also under the Soviet program
A new era. Hungary’s decision is symptomatic that it is no longer essential to go through the hoop of large space agencies such as NASA, Roscosmos or ESA itself to have a manned space program. The emergence of private actors such as Spacex, which manages transport, and Axiom, which makes “travel agency”, allows countries with budget, but without their own rocket, establish their national programs.
Interestingly, ESA has not been left with crossed ones. He has signed a framework agreement with Hungary to support Tibor Kapu in his training and in the integration of Hunor mission experiments. It is the first time that ESE is associated with a Member State that implements its own National Astronaut program, a unique agreement that defines a new type of collaboration.
The details. The launch of the Axiom-4 is scheduled for Wednesday, June 11 at 2:00 p.m., Spanish peninsular time. The crew will roast at the International Space Station the next day for a 14 -day stay. For both India and Poland and Hungary, this will be his second astronaut in history and his first time aboard the International Space Station.
Despite the short duration of the trip, its agenda is loaded: more than 60 scientific experiments will be carried out for 31 countries, including a study of how microgravity affects cognitive abilities using virtual reality and a new drug administration system for neuro-ocular syndrome associated with space flights.
Imagen | Axiom Space
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