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International Space Station: First fully private mission has arrived

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International Space StationImage source, NASA
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The ISS is essentially a big floating laboratory. Astronauts (people trained in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan to work in space) and cosmonauts (trained in Russia) travel 250 miles above Earth to live, work, and conduct science experiments in orbit.

Image source, SpaceX
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Usually government organisations such as NASA send professional astronauts up there, but now Axiom and SpaceX have clubbed together to conduct a mission with paying customers. This is the Falcon 9 rocket that carried them into orbit.

Image source, SpaceX
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The Falcon 9 blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 11:57 in the morning (which is 16:57 UK time).

Image source, SpaceX
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The crew, dubbed AX-1, was made up of an ex-Nasa astronaut (who's now the vice president of Axiom) and three billionaires, who paid a whopping $55 million each for the flight!

Image source, AXIOM SPACE
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But that's not all - unlike recent short commercial flights into space, the three passengers underwent hundreds of hours of training to prepare them for their eight day long mission. From left to right, you can see Eytan Stibbe, Michael L贸pez-Alegr铆a (the pilot), Mark Pathy and Larry Connor.

Image source, NASA
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The crew will be conducting lots of experiments over the course of the week.

Image source, NASA
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NASA hopes that these types of private missions in low orbit will free them up to focus on more missions deeper in space.

Image source, NASA
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For example, their series of Artemis missions, which are coming up over the next few years, will take them back to the Moon for the first time since 1969, and then out to Mars.