Axiom Space says it’s signed a contract with SpaceX to fly three paying passengers and an Axiom-trained commander to the International Space Station aboard a Crew Dragon spaceship as soon as the second half of next year.
If Axiom Space, SpaceX and NASA can stick to the schedule, that would qualify the 10-day trip as the first honest-to-goodness privately funded mission to the space station. Paying passengers have been traveling to the space station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft since 2001, but those missions piggybacked on regular crew-rotation flights.
