First Indian, Hungarian and Polish astronauts on their way to the ISS
For the first time an Indian, a Hungarian and a Pole have been launched into space for a stay on the International Space Station (ISS).
Together with former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, the three took off aboard a Crew Dragon capsule on a Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday, as shown by live images.
The rocket, built by Elon Musk's SpaceX company, took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The Ax-4 mission was postponed several times due to technical problems with the rocket and the ISS.
This is the fourth commercial space mission for Houston-based Axiom Space, in collaboration with the US space agency NASA and SpaceX. The Crew Dragon is expected to dock with the ISS on Thursday.
While Whitson has been in space several times, this is the first space flight for the three amateur astronauts. Shubhanshu Shukla from India works for his country's air force, while Tibor Kapu from Hungary and Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland are engineers.
They would be the first people from India, Poland and Hungary on board the ISS. People from all three countries have already been in space, first with Russian Soyuz missions in the 1970s and 1980s.
The crew of the Ax-4 mission is scheduled to spend around two weeks on board the ISS, where they will take part in numerous scientific experiments. According to media reports, such a flight costs around $80 million per passenger.
In 2022, the company Axiom organized the first private mission to the ISS, followed by others in 2023 and 2024. At just under three weeks, the third Axiom mission was the longest commercial space flight to date.
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