LOGAN, Utah — Astronauts from Hungary and Poland will fly alongside an Indian astronaut on Axiom Space’s next private astronaut mission to the International Space Station.
Axiom announced Aug. 5 the crew for Ax-4, its fourth private mission to the ISS. The mission will be commanded by former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who also led the Ax-2 mission to the station in May 2023.
Whitson will be joined by Shubhanshu Shukla, an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) astronaut that the agency announced Aug. 2 would be on the mission. Shukla will serve as pilot for Ax-4, which, like the company’s first three missions, will use a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The two mission specialists for Ax-4 are Sławosz Uznański of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary. Uznański is a European Space Agency reserve astronaut selected in 2022, eligible for specific missions like this. Poland announced in August 2023 that it, in cooperation with ESA, signed an agreement to fly an astronaut on a private mission. Sweden signed a similar agreement earlier in 2023 and flew its ESA reserve astronaut, Marcus Wandt, on the Ax-3 mission early this year.
The Hungarian government selected Kapu through its own human spaceflight project outside of ESA. A government minister said in 2022 that Hungary would spend $100 million on the project, with the country signing an agreement with Axiom Space in September 2023 for flying the astronaut.
The announcement of the crew was timed to their arrival in Houston for training with NASA, SpaceX and Axiom. The crewmembers will still need final approval from the station’s multilateral crew operations panel closer to the planned launch date.
“Ax-4 represents Axiom Space’s continued efforts to build opportunity for countries to research, innovate, test and engage with people around the world while in low Earth orbit,” Michael Suffredini, chief executive of Axiom Space, said in a statement. “Our collaboration with ESA for a second time and the inclusion of Hungary and India underscores Axiom Space’s ability to cultivate global partners, expand the scope of exploration and open up new avenues to grow a global space economy.”
Absent from the announcement was a date for Ax-4. NASA is holding a launch date of as soon as November for the mission, the agency said at a recent briefing, but a slip to at least early 2025 is considered likely.
Axiom Space has won all four private astronaut mission (PAM) opportunities awarded by NASA to date for short-duration commercial missions to the ISS. NASA has yet to issue a solicitation for future PAMs after Ax-4, but at least one other company, commercial space station developer Vast Space, has expressed an interest in competing for future missions.
