As it prepares for its upcoming astronaut flight, SpaceX

from January 17, four astronauts will be launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida from Pad 39A as part of the Ax-3 mission, which will transport them to the International Space Station (ISS).

SpaceX announced on January 12 on X that the Dragon capsule, which will transport those people to the orbiting lab and back, has now arrived at Pad 39A’s hangar. The post included images of the spacecraft in its new surroundings.

The Houston-based Axiom Space is organizing the third ISS trip, called Ax-3. Similar to its two forerunners, which took off in May 2023 and April 2022, Ax-3 will make use of SpaceX hardware, including the Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket.

Michael Lopez-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut, Col. Walter Villadei of the Italian Air Force, who also traveled to suborbital space with Virgin Galactic in June 2023, Marcus Wandt of the European Space Agency, and Alper Gezeravcı, who will become the first Turkish citizen to reach space, make up the crew of Ax-3.

López-Alegría, who is now employed at Axiom, will lead the mission. (NASA mandates that the captain of any privately crewed ISS flight be a former astronaut from the agency.) Because of his dual Spanish and American citizenship, Ax-3 has a taste of the world never seen before.

“The Ax-3 mission will be transformational, as it fosters partnerships outside the construct of the ISS, and positions European nations as pioneers of the emerging commercial space industry,” López-Alegría said in an Axiom statement in September 2023, when the crewmembers were announced.

SpaceX’s 12th astronaut mission is scheduled to be called Ax-3. Elon Musk’s company has launched eight crewed missions for NASA (including the 2020 Demo-2 test flight) in addition to the two Axiom trips. Additionally, the company has initiated the private Inspiration4 project. With the exception of Inspiration4, where Dragon sailed freely in Earth’s orbit, all of these missions made visits to the ISS.

There is just one SpaceX mission currently in orbit, the four-person Crew-7 mission, which launched in August of last year and is expected to return to Earth the following month.