Axiom Space’s next astronaut mission to the International Space Station will be delayed by several months, into 2025, due to required interagency approval processes.
Ax-4, the name of that private astronaut effort by Axiom Space, had been targeted to launch no earlier than October of this year. It will now lift off no earlier than spring 2025, NASA officials announced on Friday (Aug. 9) via X.
“The Ax-4 crew members are pending approval to fly to the orbiting lab by the Multilateral Crew Operations Panel,” NASA officials wrote in the statement. The panel approves all visiting astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), including professional crews, according to the European Space Agency.
Related: Meet the crew for Axiom Space’s Ax-4 mission to the ISS
Axiom Space did not comment on the situation on X, nor did NASA officials provide further elaboration on the decision. The crew began training in Houston in early August for their mission, which is expected to last a couple of weeks, Axiom Space’s account stated.
Axiom runs private missions to the ISS periodically with a mix of its own astronauts, agency astronauts and privately funded spaceflyers. As Ax-4’s name suggests, it will be the fourth spaceflight operated by the Houston-based company, all of which have used SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules. The first, Ax-1, flew in April 2022.
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Ax-4 is commanded by an experienced retired astronaut from NASA, per ISS rules: Peggy Whitson. Whitson has already flown before for Axiom Space, but her crewmates have not: pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India, Polish mission specialist Sławosz Uznański of ESA, and mission specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary.
Uznański is a project astronaut with ESA, meaning that the agency retains him and a group of others for an option to fly missions as needs arise. But Uznański is not a full-time astronaut with ESA. Shukla and Kapu were selected separately through processes in their individual countries.
