Cabo Cañaveral – The first astronauts in more than 40 years of India, Poland and Hungary They arrived on Thursday at the International Space Station, transported there by Spacex on a private flight.
The crew of four people will spend two weeks in the orbital laboratory, doing dozens of experiments. They were launched on Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center of the POT.
The American astronaut with more experience, Peggy Whitson, is the commander of the visiting crew. She works for Axiom Space, the Houston company that organized the Charter flight.
In addition to Whitson, the crew includes Shubhanshu Shukla in India, a pilot in the Indian Air Force; Tibor Kapu de Hungary, a mechanical engineer; and Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland, a radiation expert and one of the astronauts of the European Space Agency project in temporary flight service.
No one has visited the International Space Station since those countries before. In fact, the last time someone threw himself in rocket to orbit from those countries was in the late 70s and 80s, traveling with the Soviets.
It is the fourth flight sponsored by axiom to the space station since 2022. The company is one of several that are developing their own space stations whose launch is planned in the coming years.