Mark Pathy, businessman and CEO of investment and financing company MAVRIK, will serve as a mission specialist for Axiom Space, which on April 6 at 12:05 p.m. EDT will launch members of the Ax-1 crew from Florida to the International Space Station.
Pathy and three others will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and will travel to and from the space station on a Dragon spacecraft.
“As close as it gets to traffic, it’s really exciting,” he told a news conference on April 1.
“It was a really, at times, very intense year, but incredibly moving and the best is yet to come.”
Along with the research, their 10-day mission, including eight days to the International Space Station, will include launch activities and commercial activities, the company says.
Among those joining Pathy is fellow entrepreneur Larry Connor, a 72-year-old Ohio native and real estate investor who will serve as a mission pilot.
“Someone said to me, ‘You will be the second oldest person to ever go into space,'” and my answer, which they already knew, “Well, I think age is overrated.”
The three individuals on the space flight are rumored to have paid up to $ 55 million for a ticket.
With them is former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, commander of the Ax-1 mission.
“In the 1920s and ’30s only very, very rich people could fly. Now people get on a plane to go to a birthday party … this is going to happen on commercial human spaceflight,” he said.
Axiom Space chairman and CEO Michael Suffredini said he was “very, very excited about this first flight.”
In addition to the upcoming mission, the Houston-based company plans to build a commercial replacement for the International Space Station, which will be retired by the end of 2030.
“This is our first mission with probably hundreds of missions in the coming decades as we build the Axiom space station,” Suffredini said.
