Cape Canaveral, Florida

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Turkey's first astronaut Alper Gezeravci and three other astronauts representing Europe were launched on a flight to the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday (Jan 18). According to a report by the news agency Reuters on Friday, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the Axiom quartet lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Crew Dragon was expected to reach the International Space Station (ISS) early on Saturday morning and dock with the outpost orbiting some 400 kilometres above Earth and currently occupied by seven regular crew members.

Responding to congratulations from mission control, flight commander Michael López-Alegría radioed back from the Crew Dragon, "As I was saying, it's a team sport. Thank you, guys."

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This mission, called Ax-3, was arranged by Texas-based startup Axiom Space. It was the third such flight organised by Axiom over the past two years as the company builds on its business of putting astronauts sponsored by foreign governments and private enterprises into Earth's orbit.

Who is Alper Gezeravci?

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Gezeravci, 44, is a Turkish Air Force veteran and holds the rank of a colonel. Turkey was poised to enter the exclusive but expanding club of ISS-guest countries by sending Gezeravci on his nation's debut human spaceflight as an Ax-3 mission specialist.

His three other colleagues aboard the flight are Italian Air Force Colonel Walter Villadei, 49, Ax-3's designated pilot; Swedish aviator Marcus Wandt, 43, another mission specialist; and López-Alegría, 65, a retired NASA astronaut and dual citizen of Spain and the United States.

File photo.

Photo: Walter Villadei of Italy, Mission Specialist Alper Gezeravci of Turkey, and ESA (European Space Agency) project astronaut Marcus Wandt of Sweden in Cape Canaveral

The crew will conduct over 30 scientific experiments, many of them focused on the effects of spaceflight on human health and disease, Reuters reported.

If all goes smoothly, the four astronauts will be welcomed aboard ISS on Saturday by the seven members of the station's current regular crew - two Americans from NASA, one astronaut each from Japan and Denmark, and three Russian cosmonauts.

(With inputs from agencies)