Axiom Space plans to launch — Their fourth mission On Tuesday, June 10: A mission that CEO Tejpaul Bhatia described as “a little victory.”
In addition to being the fourth mission of the private space company at the International Space Station, Bhatia said AX-4 will be the second “national mission” of Axiom Space where all customers are national governments. In fact, the company has also dubbed this mission that will “realize the return” to human space light for India, Poland and Hungary, which each will have an astronaut in the flight.
In addition, Bhatia said that this will be the first mission of “Break Even” of the company after losing money in the first three. He emphasized that these ISS missions are not “our business model”: the company plans to add commercial modules to the ISS that eventually take off and become free to free flight Axiom station.
At the same time, Bhatia said that these initial missions provide income and help illustrate the demand for commercial space flight. In addition, they create inspirational “Apollo moments” for each of the client countries.
“It shows how space opens due to commercial companies,” he said. “For the three countries, this will be his second astronaut ever. And shows the change of Space Race 1.0 in Space Race 2.0.”
So far, Axiom Space missions have used the Spacex Dragon spacecraft to bring astronauts to ISS. The role of the company, Bhatia said, is to serve as “integrator and market agent” that can bring these missions. As the commercial space industry expands, he predicted that there will be enormous opportunities to continue to serve as a “managed market” for space, because “no one can do it alone.”
“To become a multi-plane, it is not a thing where a country has all the capabilities,” he added.
Commercial space travel prospects have seemed less safe in the last days after Acronym between President Donald Trump and Spacex’s CEO, Elon Musk Trump led him to declare that he was canceling contracts with Musk and Musk companies to say he was deactivating the Dragon Space Ship. (He after seemed to go back.)
The Axiom space refused to comment on how the Trump-Musk industry could affect industry, but when Bhatia and I spoke in late May I asked a related question about the political landscape, that is, if Potential budget cuts at NASA and more widely through scientific research He threatened the optimistic view he presented.
“It is not that government investment will open space,” Bhatia said. “They have already done so. (Now) It is the entrepreneurs who will use the commercial platforms to build the bridge at the next stage.”
The CEO is really relatively new in his current role. When we talked about, Bhatia told me it was only his fourth week at work after Replacing the company’s co -founder, Dr. Kam ghaffarian As CEO. (Ghaffarian continues to exercise as executive chairman of the company.)
But Bhatia, who was formerly an executive on Google Cloud, had spent four years as head of the company. Although his career had not focused especially on space before joining Axiom Space, he said since he was younger, “when I was dreaming, it was always space.”
And, like any CEO of the good space company, BHATIA has hopes to travel to the final border.
“I would love to go,” he told me. “I have no doubt that we will all go there.”
