A celestial mission (as part of a larger mission – AX-1) is expected to launch on February 21. Ran Levana, CEO of the Ramon Foundation, updates in a conversation with the science website the status of the mission, the preparations, the experiments and the lessons from space that Stiva is expected to broadcast live
On February 21, the launch of SpaceX's "Team Dragon" spacecraft is expected, with a former NASA astronaut and three space tourists on board: Larry Connor, an American philanthropist, Mark Fathy, a Canadian investor, and Ethan Stiva, defined on the Axiom company website as an Israeli investor and former fighter pilot.
Axiom is responsible for the training of the astronauts and all the logistics related to the flight, as well as for the operation of the scientific experiments under the concession from NASA. It also acquired the Crew Dragon spacecraft capacity from SpaceX last year. In the last 14 months, Stiva underwent intensive training at the Axiom company's facility.
In a conversation with the Hidaen website, Ran Levana, CEO of the Ramon Foundation, explains that "the late Rona Ramon always wanted a second Israeli astronaut to fly, mainly due to the ability to provide lessons in Hebrew from the station." Since that didn't work, we turned to Axiom and asked to reserve a seat on the first tourist flight to the space station in a decade. We were looking for donors and Eitan offered himself both as a donor and as someone who would carry out the task. Stiva knew Ilan Ramon and accompanied the Ramon Foundation from the day it was founded, after the death of Assaf Ramon in a plane crash."
"Stiva was not known to the Israeli public, but he is a big donor to the universities and to projects such as Zikron in the living room and more. His transformation into an astronaut made him a public figure. The flight is the fulfillment of his childhood dream, and he realized that he was not going to be a space tourist who came to enjoy himself, but to do something significant for Israel that would contribute to education and the Israeli economy - especially that of the space industry."
Rakie's innovation
Livna mentions that private space tourists have already flown into space: "Eight space tourists visited the space station (actually seven, one flew twice). It started when the Russians were looking for new sources of income and selling tickets, NASA got tired of it and they just bought all the seats in the Soyuz and closed the door on space tourism. The reason is that those space tourists, apart from bringing money into the space industry, did not contribute too much to science and the economy.
Editor's note: Only recently have the goals of space tourism expanded beyond the space station, and beyond the suborbital flights it is worth noting Inspiration 4, in which four citizens flew in the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that was converted into a space observatory. The four citizens circled the Earth in an orbit that at its peak reaches an altitude of 500 km, a height that no astronaut has crossed since the Apollo mission.
And Livna continues: "The spaceships of SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic took passengers into space, in some of them experiments were also carried out, but these were very basic experiments. The Rakiya mission is the first time a person has been sent into space on behalf of an association. Keren Ramon was a party to the agreement with Axiom. The meaning is extraordinary because the Ramon Foundation is responsible for Eitan's haze, and even for some of the training, he does not go up into space just to take a selfie but flies to promote science, technology and education in Israel."
The trial selection process
According to Livna, it was necessary to establish a committee that would judge the proposed experiments for a sky mission. "The first thing is to establish the same scientific and technological committee chaired by Inbal Kreis, who is responsible for innovation in the missile and space systems division of the aerospace industry, and around it a group of renowned professors and representatives of the Ministry of Health, the Innovation Authority and, of course, the Israel Space Agency formed. We issued a call for proposals and received dozens of offers. The committee approved 44 experiments to go into space. For all kinds of reasons, 30 remained, some fell by the wayside because of funding or did not pass engineering design tests or were not approved by NASA."
The spacecraft that will bring them and return them from the space station will be flown by former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez Alegria, who moved to work for the SpaceX company, and it will carry two additional space tourists. The experiments will be carried out for six days, so it is a large number of experiments. Eitan's schedule is already carefully planned, down to ten minute intervals. His schedule will be even busier than that of the American, Russian and European astronauts on the station.
The two space tourists will also perform experiments; The Canadian will perform approximately 12 trials, the American a little less, and Stiva will perform 3 times as many trials. Most of the experiments and equipment will be launched before the mission itself at the end of December and at the end of January in cargo spacecraft that will fly to the space station.
Even Bacium was surprised. They expected to receive simple experiments and instead they received in-depth experiments in many fields of science including communication, optics, manufacturing, materials engineering, remote medicine, chemistry and biology. Both spirit and depth. It is worth noting that NASA assigns to each of the experiments its contact person who is supposed to perform follow-up, and I hope that they will integrate more and more experiments into manned space missions in the future."
The lessons in Hebrew from space
Livna also adds: "In the mission in which Ilan Ramon flew, the technology did not make it possible to carry out live broadcasts from space. Ilan recorded several videos, and once spoke live with the prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon. Technology has improved since then and it will be possible to have live broadcasts every day. We work with the space agency and the ministries of science and education on the content. We received 500 proposals for lesson plans. We developed a lesson plan for each of the experiments and also built lesson plans with which he would learn from space. In addition, they will talk to researchers. We hope that more astronauts will help him in the experiments. The mission is going to sweep the entire State of Israel." Summarizes a brick.
דTask AX-1 on the Axiom website
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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Caution ! Ethan must not be allowed to leave Earth, his plan is to smoke Stiva and fly from here to the moon
Where can I see a list of experiments that were finally selected for Stiva's mission?