SpaceX launches Axiom Space crew from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida
A rocket launch lit up the night sky on the Space Coast as it sent a crew of four astronauts to orbit aboard a brand new SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
After multiple delays ranging from rocket issues to a leak on the International Space Station, the Axiom Space Mission 4 was finally off the ground. The crew had been in quarantine ahead of launch since May 25.
The liftoff finally came at 2:31 a.m. June 25 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center pad 39A. The Falcon 9 rocket's first stage, also known as the booster, came in for a landing at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, creating a sonic boom heard throughout Brevard.
Commanding this mission is former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, a record-breaking space flier. She called the launch in the new spacecraft an "incredible ride uphill." This mission is Whitson's second with Axiom Space.
Upon reaching orbit, the name of the latest SpaceX Dragon capsule, the final addition to the fleet, was revealed to be Grace. During a media briefing earlier this month, the crew had teased that the name would be related to their zero-gravity indicator — a plush swan.
"Grace is more than a name. It reflects the elegance at which we move through space against the backdrop of Earth," Whitson said. "Grace reminds us that spaceflight is not just a feat of engineering, but an act of goodwill."
Joining Whitson are first-time fliers Shubhanshu Shukla from India, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski from Poland, and Tibor Kapu from Hungary. The mission brings a return to human spaceflight for these three countries, as in over 40 years the countries have not seen a government-sponsored astronaut.
When is the next Florida launch? Is there a launch today? Upcoming SpaceX, Axiom, ULA rocket launch schedule at Cape Canaveral
It was the fourth astronaut mission for Axiom Space, which is working to build one of the many private space stations planned in the next decade after the ISS is deorbited.
The crew is expected to reach the ISS no earlier than 7 a.m. June 26. The four will spend two weeks onboard the space station where they will oversee 60 science experiments.
These experiments include a project which will investigate glucose monitoring and insulin onboard the ISS. Depending on results, findings could make it possible for individuals with diabetes to fly in space. Currently, those with diabetes are disqualified due to medical unknowns.
Another test by Booz Allen Hamilton, a technology company, will oversee biometric readings on a crew member using the Oura Ring. This project looks at analyzing and storing readings such as sleep quality and heart rate.
Other experiments will look at cancer growth, how the space environment impacts human perception, as well as plant nutrition and growth in space.
Once the mission is complete, the crew will splash down off the coast of California, where SpaceX recently moved its Dragon recovery operations.
The Axiom launch was the first of a planned doubleheader on the Space Coast, with a SpaceX Starlink launch set for Wednesday afternoon.
Brooke Edwards is a Space Reporter for Florida Today. Contact her at bedwards@floridatoday.com or on X: @brookeofstars.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Axiom Space astronauts launch to ISS on SpaceX rocket in Florida
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"The students thoroughly enjoyed helping set up the antenna and learning what's going on and figuring stuff out in space, because they just don't get a lot of it in school," said Dolan, who for the last 18 years of his career would devote the third quarter of the physics class to astronomy. "I also gave a presentation about the mission, coronal mass ejections, solar eruptions and how they propagate through space, and how the radio emission occurs," Manchester said. "One student who had gone to Morrison was a freshman in the College of Engineering at Michigan, and was also there helping out." The antenna they put up is part of the SunRISE Ground Radio Lab, a science program inviting people to use a multifrequency radio telescope to listen to radio signals from space. The SunRISE GRL is a collaborative effort between UM and NASA's Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment mission. UM associate research scientist and SunRISE GRL lead researcher Mojtaba Akhavan-Tafti said SunRISE is a group of six small satellites that will work together to study the sun's low-frequency radio emissions. It will help scientists better understand how solar storms form. Akhavan-Tafti said the SunRISE mission began in 2018, when NASA selected a collaborative proposal from UM and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to move forward with development. By 2020, the college had launched a multidisciplinary design program, bringing together undergraduate and graduate students to design, build and test ground-based antenna arrays in support of the SunRISE satellite mission. "After that program successfully launched, NASA came back to us and said, 'Hey, given the success of the program, do you think you could get high school students involved in the project?'" Akhavan-Tafti said. "We accepted the challenge." The SunRISE GRL now works with 18 high schools nationwide, building antennas that detect radio waves from solar phenomena. The dual dipole antennas are designed to detect a specific range of low radio frequencies — between 8 and 24 megahertz — that are linked to solar events such as coronal mass ejections, which emit radio waves as they form and travel through space. "Instead of making the antennas that were costing us around $25,000 a unit, we took it to our team, and we redesigned the antenna to be only $500," Akhavan-Tafti said. "It's a different type of antenna, different type of frequency; however, it observes the same phenomena in space." That data helps in understanding space weather and its effects on technology and human life, providing early warnings of CMEs that can affect Earth. "We can look at these solar radio bursts to tell us many days in advance that there is a storm potentially coming so that you can prepare for those types of big solar events, and so that your assets and astronauts are operating in safe environments," Akhavan-Tafti said. Although scientists still are figuring out exactly when during a CME's journey these radio signals are produced, Akhavan-Tafti said the waves themselves travel at the speed of light — reaching Earth in just minutes or hours, far faster than the CMEs, which can take days to arrive. According to the National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center, a CME is a massive burst of solar plasma and magnetic field released from the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona. These eruptions can trigger geomagnetic storms that may disrupt satellites, power grids and communications on Earth. Akhavan-Tafti said the latest results from the SunRISE GLR program focus on validating the new instruments by confirming they can detect patterns seen in past studies. "When you come up with a new instrument, you want to first make sure that it replicates previous data," Akhavan-Tafti said. "Not every surprise is a good surprise." A study, which Akhavan-Tafti said was released Wednesday, June 25, links solar radio bursts — specifically Type II radio bursts — to CMEs, as previous high-resolution space- and ground-based observations have done. What sets SunRISE apart is its use of interferometry, a method where signals from multiple antennas with unknown exact positions are combined to pinpoint the source of radio emissions. Akhavan-Tafti said this is the first time such a technique has been applied to this kind of solar observation. "One of the open science questions, after all this time, is: Exactly where are these signals coming from?" Akhavan-Tafti said. Together, the students and researchers are seeking to answer that and other research questions, such as: What are the mechanisms behind solar flares and CMEs? How do they manifest in radio emissions? What are the mechanisms behind various types of radio bursts observed on the sun, and how do they relate to space weather phenomena? Akhavan-Tafti said the SunRISE GRL aims to inspire the next generation of science, technology, engineering, arts and math students through hands-on citizen-science activities. "It would be great if they're exposed to STEAM and those types of activities to get a sense of what it's like to be a scientist or an engineer or an entrepreneur in the sciences," Akhavan-Tafti said. "That requires students to be trained to understand that these careers exist and to take courses that are going to prepare them for those types of future careers, and that's what NASA wanted us to do." One of the key scientific advantages of the SunRISE mission is its ability to detect very low-frequency radio waves — right down to what is called the plasma cutoff frequencies, which Manchester said are the "lowest frequencies available to the antenna." On Earth, the ionosphere acts as a filter, blocking radio waves below a certain frequency. "The ionosphere can only allow radio waves of certain frequencies to pass through. High frequencies go through OK, but if a frequency gets too low, the ionosphere absorbs it," Manchester said. "It almost becomes what's called the plasma frequency ... and it will just absorb it, almost like a DC current." Manchester said this makes the space-based SunRISE array especially powerful. "We have this cutoff frequency that we have to deal with, where we can't see radio waves below that frequency on Earth's surface because the ionosphere absorbs it," Manchester said. "The space mission doesn't have that issue ... so it can go to much, much lower frequencies." He said that access to lower frequencies in space is what makes the mission so compelling. "That allows us to track features much further out into the solar wind. The further out they go, the lower the natural frequency," Manchester said. "On Earth, those get cut off pretty quickly. But in space, we're gonna be able to track them much, much further out." For Akhavan-Tafti, the impact of the program goes beyond research. "These types of programs are allowing us to use federal funding to educate the next generation of entrepreneurs, policymakers, scientists and engineers of our nation," Akhavan-Tafti said. He hopes more schools will take advantage of the opportunity. "This is an open call — if any other high schools in the area think that they could benefit from this, everything is free of charge to the schools," Akhavan-Tafti said. "If they're interested in getting involved, they're welcome to contact us." For more information or to contact Akhavan-Tafti, visit the project's website at
