CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX carved its way through cloudy skies on the Space Coast, sending up a four-man crew on a private mission to the International Space Station.
The quartet rode on the Crew Dragon Freedom, making its third trip to space atop a Falcon 9 rocket that blasted off from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A at 4:49 p.m. Eastern time on the Ax-3 mission for Houston-based Axiom Space. The first-stage booster made its fifth flight, coming back for a landing at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Landing Zone 1, sending a sonic boom across parts of Central Florida.
“The four of us that are lucky enough to man the good ship Freedom at this point are humbled to be on the team. We are grateful to our teammates, and we are go for launch,” said mission commander and former NASA astronaut and Axiom chief astronaut Michael López-Alegría ahead of liftoff.
López-Alegría, who has both U.S. and Spanish citizenship, leads the all-European crew of Italian Air Force Col. Walter Villadei, acting as pilot, and mission specialists Alper Gezeravcı of Turkey and ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt of Sweden.
“Walter, Albert and Marcus, congrats. Welcome to your first flight on Dragon,” said SpaceX crew operations and resource engineer Jake Vendl after liftoff. “Mike, on the other hand, welcome to the Dragons frequent flyer club. I imagine you’ll have enough miles to qualify for platinum status after this flight. Godspeed, Axiom Three. Cheers.”
López-Alegría, who flew on Axiom’s first commercial mission to the ISS in 2022, is making his sixth trip to space, one shy of matching the record for orbital launches. He flew four times during his NASA career aboard both the space shuttle and Russian Soyuz rockets. This trip will tack on to the 275 days he’s already spent in orbit.
“Dragon, this is the Falcon team, we want to congratulate you on a great ride to orbit,” said SpaceX chief engineer Bill Gerstenmaier.