"This mission is fully opening the curtain," he stated to reporters prior to takeoff. "This is  the beginning of our next centennial"

Thursday's chartered SpaceX spacecraft carrying Turkey's first astronaut, a Swede, and an Italian, lifted off for the International Space Station.

Late in the afternoon, the three men, who were all veterans of the military and were flying for their home countries, were launched aboard a Falcon rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. A former NASA astronaut who is currently employed by the business that organized the private flight served as their tour guide for the trip.

Hopefully, on Saturday, their capsule will arrive at the space station. After two weeks of conducting experiments, mingling with schoolchildren, and taking in the vistas of Earth, they will head back home.

Each of the three nations is paying at least $55 million for it. This is the approximate cost per passenger for the trip, which is being planned by Houston-based Axiom Space in collaboration with NASA and SpaceX for the third time. NASA only started accepting paid visitors to the space station two years ago, although Russia has been doing it for more than 20 years.

Alper Gezeravci, a former fighter pilot and Turkish Airlines captain, is the first Turkish national to launch a spacecraft into orbit. He mentioned that Turkey recently celebrated its centennial and that, up until now, all that the country could see of the sky was "that which we could see with our bare eyes."

"This mission is fully opening the curtain," he stated to reporters prior to takeoff. "This is  the beginning of our next centennial."

Marcus Wandt of Sweden, a former fighter pilot and test pilot for Swedish Aeroplane Corp., who was selected by the European Space Agency in 2022 as a reserve astronaut, and Col. Walter Villadei of the Italian Air Force, who made a spacewalk with Virgin Galactic this summer, are also in flight.

Some of the significant objects they are removing include an Italian fusilli pasta, a Swedish Nobel Prize medal, and mementos of Turkey's nomadic past.

Michael Lopez-Alegria is with them; he was a NASA astronaut who launched four times before joining Axiom Space and escorting the company's inaugural chartered trip. He is the sole returning traveler on a SpaceX Dragon, the spacecraft that NASA has been using to transport personnel to the space station since 2020.

"Greetings from the Dragon regular flyer club,” radioed SpaceX Launch Control. 

End//voice7news.tv