Countries send their first astronauts in decades into space on Axiom Mission 4, along with US commander
A US commercial mission carrying crew from India, Poland and Hungary blasted off to the International Space Station on Wednesday, taking astronauts from these countries to space for the first time in decades.
Axiom Mission 4, or Ax-4, launched from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2.31am local time with a brand-new SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule riding atop a Falcon 9 rocket.
The vehicle is scheduled to dock with the orbital lab on Thursday and remain there for up to 14 days.
Onboard the spacecraft were the Indian test pilot Shubhanshu Shukla, the mission specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary, and the US commander Peggy Whitson, a former Nasa astronaut who now works for the company Axiom Space, which organises private spaceflights among other things.
