“What do you hope to achieve in the next 10 years?” This is a familiar question that is often asked in job interviews or when starting a new company.
Axiom Space Founded in 2016, it’s approaching that 10-year milestone and the Houston-based company has already ticked many of the boxes likely to be on its milestone list.
For example, Axiom has organized three: fully dedicated crewed missions to international space station (ISS) and received a NASA contract to send it. first commercial module To the ISS. The company is also building space suits NASA’s Artemis astronauts will use them while exploring the lunar surface.
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“The big excitement points for me are the missions, the spacesuit and the station,” Tejpaul Bhatia, chief revenue officer at Axiom Space, told Space.com during the 39th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs last month.
“The missions we’ve done; we’ve sent eight countries into space, three in the last three years,” Bhatia added. “We have worked with more than 50 research and commercial partners working on these missions, and we will do more. The next mission [to the ISS] It will come soon and more countries and more companies will be part of these missions. The excitement and support of reaching everyone who has knowledge about space; “This is a new era for space.”
At the beginning of this year, the company special Ax-3 mission It made history as the “first commercial astronaut mission to cover all of Europe” to the ISS. Axiom’s longest mission to date, the 22-day Ax-3, carried out a Turkish citizen. space It allowed Italy, for the first time, to take on a new role in commercial spaceflight.
A new link warning system developed by the Italian Air Force (ItAF) was used to monitor possible collision threats while in orbit. The Italian Space Operations Center demonstration provided researchers with information that would allow the crew to obtain realistic information. time Collision warnings independently, without needing too much support Soil. The team also had the opportunity to test other instruments that monitor solar activity. space weather.
“The most exciting part is using all the heritage that Italy has accumulated over the last 60 years to build new bridges with our national industries and try to establish some connection with the Italian industrial ecosystem or the United States,” he said. Ax-3 pilot Walter Villadei is a colonel in the ItAF. “We have the Air Force; for us, space is kind of an extension of our natural environment, so we want to be out there, we want to understand how we should behave or operate in space. This is a unique moment in time.”
Axiom’s fourth mission, Ax-4, is scheduled to launch no earlier than this October and will send another crew to the ISS in up to two weeks. Axiom says such missions will continue to develop knowledge and skills that will contribute to the company’s goal of building and operating the world’s first commercial space station.
Axiom also produces and tests the spacesuits that astronauts will wear on the lunar surface during NASA’s space exploration. Artemis 3 The mission is scheduled to launch in September 2026. A prototype of this suit, known as the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), announced in March. Like all other space technologies, the prototype needs to be evaluated and subjected to constant changes before the critical review phase begins in June.
“The suit needs to have multiple layers of security, so if something happens you need to be able to react quickly and minimize your action to return safely to whatever your environment is,” Villadei said. “It’s a combination of many factors.”
For example, in addition to providing mobility and comfort, the suit will also need to be able to cope with the harsh and variable environments of the lunar surface. It must also be able to withstand a wide temperature range for at least two hours.
Since the introduction of the AxEMU prototype in March 2023, Axiom Space has made significant progress in suit design and testing. The suit design is beyond the point of preliminary design review with NASA and will enter the critical design review phase in June 2024.
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“There are many other systems and subsystems within this suit, so we’re bringing in a lot of commercial partners; many of them worked on the original spacesuits, but many of them are also bringing new design elements,” Bhatia said. said.
“You and I know the commercial elements of brands you may not think of in terms of space, but when you hear they are a part of it, it makes a lot of sense,” he added. “I think it’s going to start to look like a private company working with government agencies, and before long it’s going to turn around and you’re going to see an economy in the space full of brands that we know and love and use every day. It’s not going to be like it’s another frontier, but it’s actually part of our lives.”
Axiom Space can also contribute to Artemis missions in other ways; The company is partnering with Astrolab and Odyssey Space Research on the FLEX lunar rover project, one of three recently acquired private studies. NASA funding for development work. One of these three special designs is expected to be the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) that Artemis astronauts will use to get around. moon.
“We benefit from our expertise in EVA [extravehicular activity]“Axiom Space is leading the way in designing EVA-centric components of the rover, such as vehicle interfaces for both crew and spacesuits, and containers/mounts to transport EVA vehicles,” said Russell Ralston, vice president of Extravehicular Activity for Axiom Space. he said in a press release. “This collaboration with Astrolab not only showcases our EVA expertise, but also underscores Axiom Space’s commitment to driving advances in lunar exploration.”