Crew training to start soon for first private trip to International Space Station

Training of the crew for the first entirely private trip to the InternationalSpaceStation (ISS) is to begin soon,AxiomSpace, the company behind the flight, said on Monday at a joint press conference withNASA.

Four astronauts are to be launched to the ISS in late January aboard a rocket built by anotherspacecompany, Elon Musk's SpaceX.

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Only one of the four, NASAveteran Michael Lopez-Alegria, has been inspacebefore.

The other three are businessmen, Larry Conner, an American, Mark Pathy, a Canadian, and Eytan Stibbe, an Israeli.

The mission dubbed Ax-1 is to last around 10 days, saidAxiomSpacepresident and CEO Michael Suffredini.

The astronauts will work and live in the American section of thespacestation and plan to conduct a number of scientific experiments while in orbit.

"We'll be starting what I would call serious training next week,"said Lopez-Alegria, the Ax-1 commander.

"From there the pace will pick up, and we'll all be immersed essentially full time in ISS systems and Crew Dragon training starting in the fall."

He said the four men had only been together a 'handful of times'because of the Covid-19 pandemic but would take a 'bonding'camping trip in Alaska in July.

Lopez-Alegria said he will start full-time training in August and Connor, the mission pilot, will begin in September.

Starting in October, all four will begin Houston-based training on the ISS systems and SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule.

AxiomSpaceconsiders the mission a first step in its plan to build the first commercialspacestation.

Asked about the cost of Ax-1, Suffredini said we 'generally don't talk about specific pricing.'

'It's been widely reported -- numbers in the tens of millions -- which I wouldn't argue with,'he said.

Phil McAlister, director ofNASA's commercial spaceflight development, said the mission is a "renaissance in US human spaceflight."

'This is a real inflection point,'he said.

The USspaceagency is aiming for two such private missions a year.

'We are seeing a lot of interest in private astronaut missions,'said Angela Hart,NASA's manager of commercial low-Earth orbit development.

'At this point the demand exceeds what we actually believe the opportunities on station will be,'Hart said.

Seven 'spacetourists'flew to the ISS between 2001 and 2009 aboard Russian Soyuz rockets.