SpaceX announced the cost of space flight

SpaceX has sent a Falcon 9 rocket with Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. The cost of the flight for private citizens is estimated at USD 55 million.

CNN reported.

This is the second all-private space mission from Axiom. The ship's commander is former NASA astronaut and first female commander of the ISS, Peggy Whitson, while the crew members were Saudi astronauts Rayyanah Barnawi and Ali AlQarni, whose flight was sponsored by the country's government. The third crew member is John Shoffner, an American who made his fortune in the international telecommunications business and founder of Dura-Line Corp. Barnawi and AlQarni are only the second and third Saudis to travel to space. The first was Prince Sultan bin Salman, who spent about a week on a NASA space shuttle mission in 1985. Barnawi is the first woman from Saudi Arabia to travel to space.

The astronauts will spend eight days working on the ISS. They will work together with the station's crew and conduct their own experiments. One of them, organized by the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), involves a series of tests and measurements of body performance in zero gravity.

The rocket was launched from Launch Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The booster touched down safely about seven minutes and 45 seconds after launch.

The cost of the flight for each member of the Axiom-1 mission is estimated at USD 55 million. Such flights are planned to be carried out twice or three times a year.

This isn't the first time people have paid to travel to space. A company called Space Adventures brokered several such missions to the space station in the early 2000s, booking rides for wealthy thrill seekers on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.

Axiom brought that business model to the United States, partnering with SpaceX to establish a framework for getting an array of customers to the space station. The company’s first mission, AX-1, launched in April 2022 and marked the first time private citizens travelled to the space station from US territory. At the end of 2023, it is planned to conduct a third mission, in which a four-person crew will spend two weeks on the ISS.

Axiom’s goal is to make these missions routine, offering more opportunities for people who are not professional astronauts to experience spaceflight. Derek Hassmann, chief of mission integration and operations at Axiom Space, said his company expects to see more customers sponsored by governments similar to the AX-2 passengers from Saudi Arabia.