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Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP) – India, Poland and Hungary on Wednesday launched their first astronaut in more than 40 years, which sent them on a private flight to the International Space Station.
The three countries shared the tab for a two -week mission. The Axiom Space, the Houston Company that arranged for the deal, kept the ticket price at more than $ 65 million per customer.
SpaceX’s Falcon Rocket exploded two weeks late from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center due to leak concerns. Capsules on top not only took three new people to space – no one was alive when the first astronauts of their countries launched – but America’s most experienced astronaut, Paigie Whiteson.
Apart from Whitson, the crew consists of Shubanshu Shukla of India, a pilot of the Indian Air Force; Hungary’s Tibor Kapu, a mechanical engineer; And one of the Slavos Uznanski-Visnivski of Poland, a radiation specialist and one of the astronauts of the European Space Agency is sometimes pressed into temporary duty.
Astronauts are going to come to the orbiting lab the next morning.
In addition to dozens of experiments, astronauts are blowing food that celebrates their legacy: Indian curry and rice with mangoes; Spicy Hungarian Pepper Paste; And freeze-fried polish peogi.
The first astronaut of Hungary, Burtlan Farkus traveled to the launch site to cheer on Kapu.
Farkus launched with Soviets in 1980, with a teddy bear in a cosmonut suit that went back with Kapu. The original astronauts of India and Poland also launched with the Soviet Union in the 1970s and late 1980s.
Uznanski-Visnivski carried forward the polish flag worn on his predecessor’s spacesuit, given that Miroslavaslavassevski was his biggest supporter until his death in 2022. India’s first astronaut, Rakesh Sharma, could not make Florida for launch; Shukla said that he has been a patron “at every step of this journey” and is blowing a stunning gift for him.
While other people born in India and Hungary have been swept away in space-NASA’s astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who boarded Shuttle Columbia in 2003, and two-time space tourists Charles Simoni, Microsoft Fame were American citizens at the time of launch.
Shukla said before the flight that he hopes “to ignite the curiosity of an entire generation in my country and run innovation. Like his crew, he is planning several outreach programs with them.
“I really believe that even though I am traveling in space, as a person, this is a journey of 1.4 billion people,” he said.
It was the fourth chartered flight of Axiom for the space station since 2022 and was flying as Axiom Crew Commander and Chapron for the second time of Whitson. The visit inspired her to include her in the American astronaut Hall of Fame later last month, as she was in quarantine before the flight. Whitson joined the Axiom after retiring from NASA almost a decade ago and has logged in his career in about two years of class.
Once in protest against the guests of the non -rtured station, NASA now pursues welcome mats, charging for its food and maintenance, while an experienced astronaut is with them.
This is the place to open all parts of NASA – the moon is included – for private businesses. AXIOM is one of the many American companies planning to launch its own space stations over the next few years. The target is going on more on them before the operation of more than three decades in the international station in 2031.
Space access “is no longer for the largest agencies-for all,” Uznanski-Visnivski of Poland said in front of the liftoff.
Kapu said that the people of Hungary “want to sit on the same table with veterans.” Through this mission, “Hungary gets a step close to the stars.”
He should have flowed earlier this year, but his mission was delayed after a switch in SpaceX capsules. Parivartan enabled NASA’s two stuck astronauts Buch Wilmor and Sun. Williams to return to Earth in March than employed.
AXIOM astronauts once faced a greater launch delay in reaching Florida. SpaceX was to fix an oxygen leakage in its rocket, then NASA kept the driver’s journey on an indefinite hold, monitoring the long -term air leaks on the Russians of the space station.
Falcon rockets, launched from SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk’s Florida and California, are much smaller than starsypes that make Test flights out of Texas and are exploding one after the other this year. Falcan, who has been reliable, has been taking the crew into orbit from 2020.
NASA requires starships for the moon, while Musk applied it to Mangal Yatra.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. AP is completely responsible for all materials.
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