Axiom Mission 3

Axiom Mission 3 was a private spaceflight to the International Space Station. The flight launched on January 18, 2024, and lasted for 21 days, successfully splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean. It was operated by Axiom Space and used a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. The booster, B1080, had previously flown Axiom-2, among other high-profile missions.

Muninn

The Swedish component of Ax-3 would be the Muninn mission with Marcus Wandt as the first ESA astronaut launched by a private space provider. Wandt was also the first member of the 2022 European Space Agency Astronaut Group to receive a spaceflight mission. The mission's name comes from one of Odin's two ravens that together combined symbolize the human mind with Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen being launched as part of the Huginn mission on SpaceX Crew-7. This was the first time that two Scandinavians were in space at the same time. Wandt conducted 20 experiments and participated in five educational programs from understanding the effects of space habitat designs on astronaut stress levels to exploring cellular structure changes and gene expression in microgravity. The mission's patch shows Muninn gliding around Earth to share the knowledge collected by Wandt. The dark blue circle represents Earth and includes lighter lines depicting Sweden.

Crew

All four crewmembers have backgrounds as military pilots. Michael López-Alegría was the commander as an employee of Axiom; Walter Villadei from the Italian Air Force was the mission pilot. The mission specialists were Alper Gezeravcı who was the first astronaut from Turkey; and Swedish project astronaut Marcus Wandt.

Mission

The crew lifted off on a Falcon 9 from LC-39A Florida to dock with the International Space Station for an intended mission duration of approximately two weeks. Final mission duration was 21 days; mission ended with a splashdown into the Atlantic Ocean on February 9, 2024.