Axiom Space prepares for its fourth mission to the ISS

Axiom Space plans to launch its fourth mission on Tuesday, June 10 – a task described by the CEO of Tejpaul Bhatia as “a little lap of victory”.

In addition to being the fourth mission of the Space Company at the International Space Station, Bhatia said that the AX-4 will be the “national mission completely” to the axiom spacery where all customers are national governments. In fact, the company also launched this task as “realizing” the return to the human space transportation of India, Poland and Hungary, whom each will have an astronaut on the trip.

In addition, Batia said this would be the first “rest mission” for the company after losing money in the first three. He emphasized that these ISS tasks are “not our business model”-the company plans to add commercial units to ISS, which is finally separated and the Axiom station is released.

At the same time, Batia said that these initial tasks bring revenues and help clarify the demand for a commercial space journey. In addition, they create an inspiring “Apollo moments” for each of the customers.

“He explains how the space is opened due to commercial companies,” he said. “For all three countries, this will be a second astronaut ever. The shift from Space 1.0 to Space Race 2.0 shows.”

To date, Axiom Space missions used the Dragon Dragon Sagex spacecraft to bring astronauts to ISS. Bhatia said that the company’s role is to work as a “mediator integration into the market” that can collect these tasks together. With the expansion of the commercial space industry, he expected that there will be huge opportunities to continue working as the “managed market” for the area, because “no one can do so alone.”

He added: “To be multiple lines, this is not something in which one country has all the capabilities.”

Travel prospects to space seemed less confident in the past few days, after being intensified between president Donald Trump and the CEO of Spacex Elusk Trump to a declaration that he had been canceling decades with Musk companies to say that he was re -operating it in Dragon. (Later it looked back.)

Axiom Space refused to comment on how Trump Musk’s conflict affects the industry, but when Bhatia and I and I spoke in late May, I asked him a relevant question about the political scene-that is, whether discounts in the potential budget in NASA and on a larger scale through scientific research threatened the optimistic vision he was presenting.

Bhatia said: “It is not that government investment will open the space.” “They did so already. [Now] It is entrepreneurs who will use commercial platforms to build a bridge to the next stage. “

The CEO is actually new to his current role. When we talked, Batia told me that he was only fourth in the job after replacing the co -founder of the company, Dr. Cam Gavarian, as CEO. (Gaviane is still working as the company’s executive.)

But Bathia – who was a former Google Cloud executive official – has already spent four years as the company’s senior revenue. Although his career did not focus in particular on space before joining Axiom Space, he said that since he was younger, “when I was dreaming dreams, it was always a matter of space.”

Like any GOOD Space CEO, Bhatia has hope to travel to the end to the same limits.

He told me: “I love to go.” “I have no doubt that we will all go.”