Axiom-4 Mission Preparation and Execution at Col-CC

Kurzfassung

The Axiom-4 short duration mission is a private spaceflight with a crew of 4 astronauts to the International Space Station, operated by Axiom Space. Following Axiom-1 mission in 2022, Axiom-2 mission in 2023 and Axiom-3 mission in 2024, the Axiom-4 mission is expected to launch in May 2025 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Being the fourth mission of its kind, it is the second mission where an ESA astronaut is a crewmember on a private spaceflight to the International Space Station. Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski was selected in November 2022 as a member of the ESA astronaut reserve and joined ESA as a project astronaut on 1 September 2023. The short duration of approximately two mission weeks imposes numerous challenges to the teams both during the preparation and execution phases: from resource planning and allocation, going through new concept of operations shared between private industries and agencies, to the dynamics of a highly-constrained launch schedule. The concept of operations, developed first for an ESA astronaut on an Axiom mission during Axiom-3, has now undergone several improvements thanks to the continuous learning process we implement within the ESA/DLR (European Space Agency/German Aerospace Center) integrated team at the Columbus Control Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. While a short duration mission might seem easier than expeditionary operations of 6-8 months, the workload on the crewmember is maximized onboard while respecting rest and exercise times. On the other side, the teams on ground increase their managed crew-time by a 3-fold with nearly the same personnel. This paper will focus on how the established operational processes, combined with a strong dose of anticipation and staggered approach, helped during preparation and execution of the mission. The different aspects that are considered include the improvement of already-established operational processes, challenges encountered and how the continuous lessons-learned process will feed future commercial missions with ESA astronauts.