“What do you hope to achieve in the next 10 years?” is a familiar question often asked in job interviews or when starting a new company.
Axiom Cosmos was founded in 2016, so it’s approaching that 10-year mark — and the Houston-based company has already ticked off a lot of boxes that were likely on its milestone list.
For example, Axiom has organized three fully private manned missions to International Space Station (ISS) and received a contract with NASA to send the first commercial module to the ISS. The company is too building the spacesuits which NASA’s Artemis astronauts will use during their exploration of the lunar surface.
Connected: NASA’s Artemis Program: Everything you need to know
“The biggest excitement for me is the missions, the spacesuit and the station,” Tejpaul Bhatia, chief revenue officer at Axiom Space, told Space.com at the 39th Space Symposium, held last month in Colorado Springs.
“The missions we’ve done — three in the last three years, we’ve sent eight countries into space,” Bhatia added. “We have worked with over 50 research and commercial partners working on these missions, and we will be doing more.” The next mission [to the ISS] will be coming soon and more countries and companies will be part of these missions. The excitement and scope to get everyone to know about space — it’s a new era for space.”
At the beginning of this year the company private mission Ax-3 made history as “the first all-European commercial astronaut mission” to the ISS. The 22-day Ax-3, Axiom’s longest mission to date, sent a citizen of Turkey to space for the first time and allowed Italy to join a new role with commercial spaceflight.
While in orbit, a new liaison warning system developed by the Italian Air Force (ItAF) was used to monitor for possible collision threats. The demonstration by the Italian Space Operations Center provided researchers with information that would allow crews to obtain near-real time collision warnings independently without having to rely heavily on support from The Earth. The team was also able to test other instruments that monitor solar activity and space time.
“The most exciting part is to use all the heritage that Italy has gathered in the last 60 years to build new bridges together with our national industries and try to create some kind of connection between the Italian industrial ecosystem or with the American one,” said the Pilot of Ax-3 Walter Villadei, a colonel in the ItAF. “There is an air force; space for us is a kind of extension of our natural environment, so we want to be there, we want to understand how we should behave or work in space. It’s a unique moment in time.”
Axiom’s fourth mission, Ax-4, is scheduled to launch no earlier than this October and will send another crew to the ISS for up to two weeks. Such missions, Axiom says, will continue to build knowledge and skills that contribute to the company’s goal of building and operating the world’s first commercial space station.
Axiom also builds and tests the spacesuit that astronauts will wear on the surface of the moon during NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, which is scheduled to launch in September 2026. A prototype of this suit, known as the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), was revealed in March. Like any other space technology, the prototype must be evaluated and undergo continuous changes before the critical review phase begins in June.
“The suit is supposed to have multiple levels of safety, so in case something happens, you have to be able to react quickly and minimize your actions to get back to safety, no matter what your environment,” Villadei said. “It’s a combination of many factors.
For example, the suit would need to be able to handle the harsh and variable environments of the lunar surface, in addition to providing mobility and comfort. It must also be able to withstand a wide range of temperatures for a minimum of two hours.
Since unveiling the AxEMU prototype in March 2023, Axiom Space has made significant progress in suit design and testing. The suit design is beyond the preliminary design review point with NASA and will enter the critical design review phase in June 2024.
“There are several other systems and subsystems inside this suit, so we’re bringing in a lot of commercial partners, many who worked on the original spacesuits, but many who are introducing new design elements,” Bhatia said.
“Commercial elements from brands you and I know you might not think about the space, but it makes perfect sense when you hear they’re part of it,” he added. “I think it’s going to start looking like a private company working with government institutions, and pretty soon it’s going to flip and you’re going to see a whole economy in the space with brands that we know and love and use every day.” There won’t be anything that this is some other border, but it’s actually part of our lives.”
Axiom Space can contribute to Artemis missions in additional ways as well; the company partnered with Astrolab and Odyssey Space Research on the FLEX lunar rover project, one of three private efforts that just got NASA development funding. One of these three proprietary designs is expected to become the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) that Artemis astronauts will use to get around The moon.
“Using our experience in EVA [extravehicular activity]Axiom Space is a leader in the design of EVA-oriented rover components, such as vehicle interfaces for both crew and spacesuits, and containers/attachments for carrying EVA instruments,” Russell Ralston, vice president of Extravehicular Activity for Axiom Space , said in a press release. “This collaboration with Astrolab not only demonstrates our EVA expertise, but also underscores Axiom Space’s commitment to driving advances in lunar exploration.”
