Watch Live: SpaceX Prepares Falcon 9 For Commercial Flight To ISS

The first all-European commercial crew will be catapulted to the International Space Station atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. 

Retired NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría will command the  Ax-3 mission, which Axiom Space Inc., a Houston-based company, operates. 

López-Alegría will be joined by Italian co-pilot Walter Villadei, European Space Agency astronaut Marcus Wandt of Sweden, and Turkey’s Alper Gezeravci.

SpaceX plans to open the “instantaneous launch window” at 1649 ET for Ax-3 astronauts that will launch from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. 

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Bloomberg pointed out that López-Alegría commanded the first Ax-1 mission in 2022 to the ISS.