Inside Axiom Space: Preparing international astronauts for a historic ISS mission

HOUSTON: In an interview at Axiom Space’s Houston headquarters, Axiom-4 mission’s (Ax4) mission manager Bryan Mitchell shares insights on the mission that will carry India’s Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla to the International Space Station (ISS) this spring, with TOI’s Chethan Kumar. Shukla is set to become India’s first astronaut in 40 years, following Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma’s Russian mission. Led by decorated US astronaut Peggy Whitson as commander, with Shukla as pilot, the crew includes Polish astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu. As preparations intensify, Mitchell discusses the challenges and innovations driving this multinational commercial space venture.


I'm the Ax4 mission manager, and that means I'm ultimately responsible for ensuring the preparedness of Axiom and our national partners, Poland, India and Hungary to be prepared to go and execute this mission. I've had the opportunity to interact with the crew and in every one of those engagements, it's been entirely positive. They've been completely focused on mission objectives, their training campaign, and ensuring they're as prepared as possible to execute these objectives for their nations and also for the mission as a whole. It's really exciting to be in this role as mission manager and watch crew members grow and get prepared.

I think it's really important that we highlight the diverse and varied group of crew members coming from India, Poland and Hungary, in addition to our commander from the US. Through our training programmes, we are absolutely looking for opportunities to both communicate and collaborate and foster that team based dynamic that all crew members are entirely comfortable with one another to ensure that they're able to execute the mission. We have also modified our training flow and approach to be entirely culturally inclusive to again foster that team based dynamic that we're looking for for this flight.

They receive core critical systems training on the ISS and in addition, they're going to execute a variety of simulation based opportunities that teach them day-to-day operations, including payload execution. They have a heavy focus on emergency response preparedness. Our crew members have received module specific training. In fact, they learned about the Japanese experiment module and Columbus module. Such a comprehensive training approach for the ISS systems, onboard payload and media equipment in these various modules all come together to set the crew up for success.

We're integrating and collaborating with SpaceX and Nasa for training flow. We begin by bringing the crew into an initial onboarding where we set expectations for the overall mission objectives, the way in which we're going to train them that ultimately sets them up for success during the mission execution phase. Post this, we hand them over to SpaceX for system specific training on the SpaceX Dragon and Falcon-9 launch vehicle, which includes simulations based training, classroom based training, and preparedness for emergency response scenarios. Concurrently, the Axiom and Nasa training is also done. We work with our partners at the Nasa Johnson Space center to get crew members familiar with habituation in the ISS. And that can include things like interacting with the equipment on the orbiting laboratory payloads, for example.

They received a comprehensive set of SpaceX Dragon system specific training which includes launch procedures all the way through orbital mechanics, and in addition to that, they've also received education on life support, communications and navigation systems. Additionally, they performed simulations based training to prepare for some of the more dynamic phases of flight, which include the rendezvous and docking with the ISS.

Axiom's approach to private astronaut missions is one of constant reassessment. So, us having the opportunity to execute axiom missions 1, 2 and 3 has really laid a lot of groundwork for us to constantly self assess and learn how we can improve. Two recent areas of improvement involve increasing quantity and fidelity of training for crew as they're capturing imagery, both pictures and video. The reason we think that's really important is we want all messaging and content that the crew are capturing on orbit to be able to be shared with the ground effectively. The second area of improvement is an increase in training and also operations products that support execution of on orbit live events and media engagements, and all of that coming together to help improve the ground team's ability to respond to those events and also enable the crew members to successfully execute them.

The Ax4 mission directly expands international participation in commercial spaceflight by providing an opportunity for our partner nations, India, Poland and Hungary. For this flight, what we're doing is integrating and collaborating with government agencies as well as private entities to align on national space interests. And what we're finding is that in addition to being able to set up for and complete those mission specific objectives, we're getting cross collaboration between the organisations that ultimately will result in an even larger set of mission objectives that we're able to accomplish.

It's important to note that emergency response scenarios are really unlikely. That said, they are of high consequence, so we want them entirely prepared. First, for response to depressurisation, crew members will don emergency protective masks so that they have breathing air, enabling them a bit of opportunity to try and isolate the area of depressurisation and hopefully, in that isolation, save themselves. Similarly, for fire response, the crew members will don protective masks and identify the source, location of the fire and extinguish it all while they're trying to manage smoke and combustion. Another emergency that our crew are prepared for is medical. To that end, they are trained to use on orbit first aid and medical equipment to address injury or illness.