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Artist's concept of the private Axiom space station in Earth orbit.

The first-ever commercial space station will become a manufacturing hub just a few years after reaching orbit, if everything goes according to plan.

Houston-based company Axiom Space envisions its off-Earth outpost the first pieces of which are scheduled to launch in 2020 initially taking the reins from the International Space Station (ISS), serving as a base for research and a destination for national astronauts and deep-pocketed tourists.

While those duties will continue into the future, the biggest money lies in another field, Axiom Space representatives said. [6 Private Deep-Space Habitats Paving the Way to Mars]

"We expect that, by the 2027 time frame, manufacturing will overtake all the other revenue combined," Amir Blachman, Axiom Space's vice president of strategic development, told Space.com.

Axiom Space plans to attach its first module (lower right, with body-mounted solar panels) to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2020.

Axiom Space has formally existed for just 16 months, but its leaders are far from newbies in the field. Axiom's president and CEO is Michael Suffredini, who managed NASA's ISS program for a decade, and its chairman is Kam Ghaffarian, president and CEO of SGT Inc., a NASA contractor that operates the ISS and trains American astronauts.

Axiom's plan involves leveraging the ISS in a variety of ways, and then operating its successor. For example, the company aims to start launching space tourists on 10-day missions to the ISS in 2019. Training for such voyages should begin this year, Blachman said. (Such tourist flights will cost tens of millions of dollars per seat, he added.)

Axiom's station will begin taking shape in 2020, when the company begins launching its own modules to link up with the ISS. When the first two such pieces are aloft and attached, the Axiom outpost will be operational and capable of housing seven crewmembers, Blachman said.

The company plans to launch a half dozen or so additional pieces power and propulsion modules, for example through 2024. The total cost of construction, launch and assembly will likely be between $1.5 billion and $1.8 billion, Blachman said.

During this time, Axiom will continue supporting visitors. Some will be national (also known as "sovereign") astronauts on 60-day missions, while others will be tourists on their shorter jaunts. The company also expects to make money from advertising and sponsorships, Blachman said.

"We'd like to see, with us, astronaut uniforms look like NASCAR uniforms, or modules that have companies' names on them," he said. Lab equipment inside the station could be sponsored by companies in the biomedical field, he added.

When the ISS comes to the end of its life, the Axiom station will separate and begin flying freely in low Earth orbit. This milestone is currently scheduled to occur in 2024, though NASA and its partners are discussing the possibility of extending the $100 billion ISS through 2028.

When the International Space Station reaches the end of its operational life, Axiom's outpost will separate and begin flying freely.

Axiom will likely start generating revenue from manufacturing early on, thanks in large part to rapidly advancing 3D-printing technology, Blachman said. The company hopes to ramp up quickly, serving as a production base for a variety of big and lucrative jobs in a decade or so, he added.

"We can envision printing hundreds of jet turbines and super-specialized alloys, and down-massing them in quantity," Blachman said. "We're talking 2026, 2027, 2028." [3D Printing: 10 Ways It Could Transform Space Travel]

Not all of this space-made gear will come back down to Earth. Customers will also use the station to manufacture and deploy small satellites, at a fraction of the current cost required to launch a fully formed spacecraft from Earth, Blachman said.

Axiom is already discussing its plans with Made In Space, the California-based company that built both of the 3D printers aboard the ISS. (One of these printers now belongs to NASA, but Made In Space owns and operates the other one, a commercial machine known as the Additive Manufacturing Facility, or AMF.)

"The things that Axiom is doing and the things that we're doing are very, very synergistic," Made In Space CEO Andrew Rush told Space.com. "We've agreed to try and use each other's services as much as possible."

For example, Made In Space plans to make the AMF available to astronauts flying via Axiom, Rush said. And the California company "will be looking very closely" at the Axiom outpost as a site for the large-scale production of high-quality optical fiber and other material that Made In Space plans to manufacture off Earth, Rush added.

Furthermore, Made In Space's Archinaut technology basically, an advanced 3D printer integrated with robotic arms could augment or improve Axiom's station, by building external platforms or other structures, Rush added.

Made In Space has also had discussions with Bigelow Aerospace, a Las Vegas-based company that plans to launch its own private space outposts some in Earth orbit, and some on and around the moon.

Bigelow's expandable habitats, one of which is currently attached to the ISS as a technology demonstrator, are made of soft but tough fabric. Axiom, on the other hand, will use rigid metallic modules built by French company Thales Alenia Space.

"It's our objective and our plan to work with everybody, and to use whatever is best suited for our purposes as the systems come online," Rush said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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1st Private Space Station Will Become an Off-Earth Manufacturing Hub - Space.com

CAPE CANAVERAL The Cygnus commercial logistics vehicle departed the International Space Station this morning for a week-long free-flight filled with autonomous science tasks before re-entry.

Owing to a rejiggered schedule that optimizes astronauts workload, the unberthing occurred six weeks ahead of the original plan. A brief window opened in the crews timeline, and flight controllers decided to squeeze in the Cygnus release now instead of waiting until July 16.

The timing became available when bad weather scuttled the launch of the next SpaceX Dragon cargo ships launch from Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, delaying its arrival at the station until Monday.

After closing up the hatchway into Cygnus on Saturday, 16 electrically-driven bolts disengaged early this morning to free the vessel from the Earth-facing side of the Unity connecting hub. The 58-foot-long Canadarm2 then maneuvered the metallic-clad ship into the imaginary departure box.

Flight engineer Jack Fischer, from the robotics workstation in the multi-window cupola module, commanded the arm to let go of Cygnus at 9:10 a.m. EDT (1310 GMT) while flying 250 miles over the South Atlantic.

Godspeed and fair winds, S.S. John Glenn. It has been an honor, Fischer radioed.

The craft logged 43 days, 3 hours, 5 minutes at the station from arm grapple till arm release.

Cygnus then began firing thrusters in a retreat pattern to move away from the station, quickly separating to a safe distance.

The cargo ship, ceremonially dubbed the S.S. John Glenn, was the seventh resupply mission by Orbital ATK of Dulles, Virginia, under NASAs commercial logistics-delivery program.

Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth in February 1962, died in December at age 95.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket boosted this freighter into space from Cape Canaveral on April 18 and it arrived at the station April 22 to deliver 7,443 pounds of cargo, including over 2,000 pounds of science experiments and hardware.

After the astronauts unloaded the hardware delivered, they filled the empty craft with 4,300 pounds of garbage and no-longer-needed materials and hardware to be taken away from the stations living quarters.

Its like six people living in a five bedroom house and no one is taking out the trash. It has to go out sometime and so Cygnus, with its big volume, provides a lot of capability for getting that trash off the ISS, said Frank DeMauro, Orbital ATKs vice president and general manager of its Advanced Programs Division in the Space Systems Group.

While certainly delivering the cargo is the glorious part, I think removing the disposable cargo, in a way, is extremely important.

Cygnus will spend the next week as a free-flying spacecraft, conducting the SAFFIRE 3 fire experiment this afternoon, downlinking the voluminous data and video that will be recorded during that test, and deploying four small LEMUR-2 satellites on Thursday from an altitude about 50 miles higher than the station for meteorology and ship tracking.

Re-entry into the South Pacific is planned for next Sunday, June 11.

After another successful stay at the International Space Station, we now enter the next phase of the mission which marks the third time Cygnus has been used as a research platform for science experiments in space, said Frank Culbertson, President of Orbital ATKs Space Systems Group.

Our ability to demonstrate expanded capabilities for Cygnus beyond its core cargo delivery function shows a level of versatility and flexibility with a solid track record of mission success for our customers.

Cygnus will host the third of three initial-generation spacecraft fire safety experiments, called SAFFIRE, to study the behavior of flames and combustion in microgravity for future capsule designers. Previous Cygnus freighters housed SAFFIRE burns on two flights last year. This test will use one large piece of material to burn, but apply lessons from the earlier experiment runs.

SAFFIRE is a large, self-contained experiment stowed in the back of the Cygnus module. The blaze is ground-commanded, which is expected to occur later today.

As the first chance to actually study a realistically scaled fire, the SAFFIRE experiments have provided valuable insight into fire behavior inside a confined low-gravity environment, said David Urban, SAFFIRE principal investigator.

Sensors record the ambient temperature and the oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations, two video cameras provide top views of the entire sample, thermocouples are woven into the sample and a radiometer measures the heat given off.

The flame propagates over a panel of thin material approximately 0.4 m wide by 0.94 m long (15.7 x 37 inches) to quantify flame development over a large sample in low-gravity.

Cygnus will remain in orbit for several days until all of the data and imagery recorded during the experiment are downlinked to the ground.

The next-generation of the experiment is being designed for flights in 2019 as SAFFIRE 4, 5 and 6.

SAFFIRE 4-6 will extend the research by including larger, more energetic fires and by testing post-fire cleanup systems, said Urban.

One final science objective for this Cygnus known as the Thermal Protection Material Flight Test and Reentry Data Collection (RED-Data2) is planned during the atmospheric plunge next week.

A company wanting to develop a family of re-entry vehicles to return scientific research samples to Earth from the space station will get a demonstration test at the end of the Cygnus flight when it brakes from orbit.

For this experiment, we are flying three different probes and we have three new heat shield materials that NASA is wanting to get flight-test data for, said John Dec, principle investigator of the RED-Data 2 experiment at Terminal Velocity Aerospace in Atlanta.

The primary data that we are attempting to collect is temperature data from thermocouples that are embedded in the heat shield of each probe.

The three materials being put to the test: A new form of Avcoat that will be used on Orion human spacecraft, the others, developed by the NASA Ames Research Center, are the lightweight Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (C-PICA) and Conformal Silicone Impregnated Refractory Ceramic Ablator (C-SIRCA).

Its kind of like a lawn dart without the stick, Dec said of the probes. The RED-Data probes are only about 9 inches in diameter and weigh about 5.5 kilograms.

Kept inside the Cygnus throughout its mission, the three soccer ball-sized RED-Data-2 probes will be dispersed once the freighter breaks up during re-entry. Each probe will record vehicle location, temperature, acceleration, pressure and gyroscopic data seen during the fiery plunge back to Earth.

When Cygnus does its de-orbit burn, it will start to re-enter the atmosphere and thats when we begin to collect our data. We use the accelerations to determine whether or not were actually starting to re-enter. When Cygnus breaks up, our vehicles are then released into the free-stream flow and thats really when our experiment begins, Dec said.

We have to wait to emerge from the ionization blackout, up until then we are storing data onboard. As soon as we emerge from the blackout, we use the Iridium satellite network to transmit all of our data from our vehicles to the Iridium network and then down to us at the ground station. We never physically recover vehicles, they land in the ocean, but we do get the data back.

The probes use a 45-degree sphere-cone geometry that is designed to always right itself and orient nose-first within a couple of seconds.

This shape is very easily scaled up in size. So what we foresee in the future is to have a sample-return capability. It would be an on-demand type of down-mass capability for the space stationThats really where our future direction is going is to develop a vehicle big enough to bring samples back, said Dec.

The next Cygnus to visit the station is planned for September, launching atop Orbital ATKs own Antares rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia.

See earlier OA-7 Cygnus coverage.

Our Atlas archive.

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[ June 4, 2017 ] SS John Glenn freighter departs space station after successful cargo delivery Atlas 5 - Spaceflight Now

By NASA // June 5, 2017

ABOVE VIDEO:SpaceX launch of its eleventh Commercial Resupply Services mission (CRS-11) from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The instantaneous launch was on Saturday, June 3 at 5:07 p.m.

BREVARD COUNTY KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLORIDA Major experiments that will look into the human body and out into the galaxy are on their way to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft following its launch from Kennedy Space Center on early Saturday evening.

The Dragon lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at 5:07 p.m. Saturdayaboard a Falcon 9 rocket.

About 6,000 pounds of research equipment, cargo and supplies are packed into the cargo craft that is now in Earth orbit and headed to the station.

NASA Television and the agencys website will provide live coverage of the rendezvous and capture beginning at 8:30 a.m. Monday, June 5. NASA astronauts Jack Fischer and Peggy Whitson will use the space stations robotic arm to capture SpaceXs Dragon when it arrives at the station.

Research materials flying inside the Dragons pressurized area include an experiment studying fruit flies to better understand the effects on the heart of prolonged exposure to microgravity.

Because theyre small, age rapidly, and have a well-known genetic make-up, they are good models for heart function studies.

This experiment could significantly advance understanding of how spaceflight affects the cardiovascular system and could aid in the development of countermeasures to help astronauts.

The Systemic Therapy of NELL-1 for osteoporosis investigation tests a new drug that can rebuild bone and block further bone loss, improving crew health.

When people and animals spend extended periods of time in space, they experience bone density loss, or osteoporosis. In-flight countermeasures, such as exercise, prevent it from getting worse, but there isnt a therapy on Earth or in space that can restore bone.

The results from this ISS National Laboratory-sponsored investigation build on previous research also supported by the National Institutes for Health and could lead to new drugs for treating bone density loss in millions of people on Earth.

ABOVE VIDEO:Time lapse of the NASA TV feed of the rendezvous, grapple, and berthing of the SpaceX Dragon CRS-8 spacecraft to the Node 2 module (Harmony) by the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) or robotic arm aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on April 10, 2016.

Three payloads inside Dragons unpressurized area will demonstrate new solar panel technologies, study the physics of neutron stars, and host an array of Earth-viewing instruments.

This mission is SpaceXs eleventh cargo flight to the station under NASAs Commercial Resupply Services contract. Dragons cargo will support dozens of the more than 250 science and research investigations during the stations Expeditions 52 and 53.

The Dragon spacecraft is scheduled to depart the space station in early July, returning with more than 3,400 pounds of science, hardware and crew supplies.

For more than 16 years, humans have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies, making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth that will enable long-duration human and robotic exploration into deep space.

A global endeavor, more than 200 people from 18 countries have visited the unique microgravity laboratory that has hosted more than 1,900 research investigations from researchers in more than 95 countries.

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VIDEO: New NASA Experiments, Research To Arrive At International Space Station Monday Morning - SpaceCoastDaily.com

Leaving crewmate Peggy Whitson behind in orbit for an extended mission, a Russian cosmonaut and his French co-pilot undocked from the International Space Station early Friday, setting the stage for a fiery plunge to Earth and a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a 196-day mission.

Soyuz MS-03 commander Oleg Novitskiy and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet shared a final round of hugs and handshakes with Whitson, Expedition 52 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and astronaut Jack Fischer, boarded their ferry ship and closed the hatch at 3:35 a.m. EDT (GMT-4).

"You guys take care," Fischer called out a few moments earlier.

Two hours later, at 6:47 a.m., powerful springs gently pushed the Soyuz away from the station's Earth-facing Rassvet module.

After moving a safe distance away, Novitskiy planned to oversee an automated four-minute 36-second de-orbit rocket firing starting at 9:17 a.m. to slow the spacecraft by about 286 mph, just enough to drop the far side of the orbit into the atmosphere.

If all goes well, the Soyuz MS-03 crew compartment will drop to a parachute-and-rocket-assisted touchdown 89 miles southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 10:10 a.m. (8:10 p.m. local time), the first landing by a two-person Soyuz crew since March 18, 2010, when astronaut Jeff Williams and cosmonaut Maxim Suraev came home.

As usual, Russian and European Space Agency recovery crews and flight surgeons were standing by to assist the returning station fliers as they begin re-adjusting to gravity. Novitskiy's total time in space over two missions will stand at 340 days while Pesquet will have logged 196 days aloft on his first flight.

During their six-and-a-half months in space, the Soyuz MS-03 crew completed 3,136 orbits covering 82.9 million miles. They helped welcome five visiting vehicles -- four cargo ships and a crew ferry flight -- and Pesquet participated in two spacewalks totaling 12 hours and 32 minutes.

"We are, of course, going to miss Oleg and Thomas," Whitson said Thursday, choking back tears. "They are exceptional astronauts in every sense of the word. But mostly, we're going to miss their sense of humor and camaraderie."

Space station commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, left, makes final preparations for undocking while Soyuz MS-03 commander Oleg Novitskiy and Thomas Pesquet look on from inside the hatch of their ferry craft.

NASA TV

Said Pesquet: "It was a great adventure. Just want to say for me and Oleg, we were really proud to be part of such a team and fly with Peggy. Peggy's a legend, but she's also absolutely unbelievable to work with or just hang around with, live with in space."

Whitson flew into space with Novitskiy and Pesquet last Nov. 17. She originally expected to come home with them, but in April, her mission was extended to Sept. 3.

"We're a little bit sad to leave her behind, but we're not staying!" Pesquet laughed during a change-of-command ceremony Thursday. "We know she's in good hands. ... Now is the time for us to go back home to our friends and family, and we're happy. But it's also a bittersweet feeling because we know this is such a unique place that you sometimes get to experience only once. It was fantastic, thanks to everybody."

After initial medical checks and satellite phone calls to family and friends, Novitskiy and Pesquet will be flown by helicopter to the town of Karaganda for an official Kazakh welcome ceremony. Novitskiy then will board a Russian jet for the flight back to Star City near Moscow while Pesquet boards and ESA aircraft and returns to Cologne, Germany, for debriefing.

On Thursday, Whitson turned over command of the station to Yurchikhin.

"Today, I hand over (command) to Fyodor Yurchikhin, the only guy I've flown three times with," she said. "So welcome to your command."

"It's an honor for me working with you, Peggy," said Yurchikhin, speaking in English. "We use your experience in space, your soul, your smarts. The greatest person, an amazing person. Sometimes, everybody says Peggy is 'iron woman,' 'steel woman.' She's amazing woman, an amazing person in space. Thank you very much. So welcome on board to Expedition 52."

Yurchikhin and Fischer took off aboard the Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft on April 20. In a move to save money in the near term, the Russian federal space agency opted not to include a third crew member. After negotiations with Russian space managers, NASA decided to extend Whitson's mission to Sept. 3 when she will take the available seat on the MS-04 spacecraft and return to Earth with Yurchikhin and Fischer.

Keeping Whitson in space will enable additional research between the departure of Novitskiy and Pesquet and the arrival of Soyuz MS-05 commander Sergey Ryazanskiy, Randy Bresnik and ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli on July 28. It also preserves the option for a two-person NASA spacewalk in an emergency.

Whitson is America's most experienced astronaut with 573 days in space over three missions as of Friday. When she returns to Earth Sept. 3, her cumulative time in space will stand at 666 days, moving her up to eighth in the world. Whitson is also No. 3 in the world in total spacewalk time with more than 60 hours of EVA time over 10 excursions.

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Two space station fliers wrapping up 196-day flight - CBS News

The sound of radio static had never been so suspenseful.

After five attempts via ham radio to reach the International Space Station, a mans voice suddenly filled the room at a Ronkonkoma school.

Great to hear you and answer your questions, declared astronaut Jack Fischer.

With that, a group of parents, students and staff at St. Joseph School collectively sighed in relief.

The school could complete its sweeping, yearlong space project, involving students from pre-K through eighth grade. The ultimate goal: interview a NASA astronaut aboard the orbiting space station, with help from a network of amateur radio broadcasters.

After that agonizing delay, the call went through. For 15 minutes or so that morning on May 22, students peppered Fischer with questions as he drifted miles above Santa Rosa, California.

You wonder, Oh my gosh, is this going to work? Principal Richard Kuntzler said afterward. There was [an adrenaline] rush that was worth the whole years project.

Shane Bellino, a sixth-grader, asked Fischer what he would tell his pre-astronaut self.

Great question, Shane. I would just say keep working really hard because its worth it in the end. All of that hard work finally paid off, said Fischer, 43, an Air Force pilot who became an astronaut in 2011. He arrived at the space station in April.

For Bellino of Selden the experience was life-changing. He had heard stories about his grandmother helping to build the outer shell of Apollo 11, which took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon on July 20, 1969.

Im never going to forget it, said Bellino, 12, who now aspires to be an astronaut.

That kind of reaction is even better than what Jennifer Medordi, St. Josephs technical director and a ham radio operator, envisioned when she pitched the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program to school administrators more than a year ago.

This was something that I wasnt sure would have that kind of impact, but it did, she said.

ARISS is an international network of amateur radio societies that use their technology and expertise to connect schools with the space station. Most people use amateur radio frequencies and transmitters to communicate with each other locally or around the world via satellites and antennas. But the technology can also be used to reach space with some coordination.

ARISS set the contact date and time with NASA. Then, the school called into an ARISS member station in California, where a ham operator was able to link to the space station overhead via radio, White said.

To prepare, Medordi said the school organized Space Days every few weeks with age-appropriate activities for every grade, like making astronaut food. They had no groundwork here so we had to lay it for them, she said.

Lauren Avilla, 14, of Medford, called her chance to ask Fischer a question a big honor.

How many people can say theyve spoken to an astronaut?

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Long Island students contact space station, quiz astronaut | Newsday - Newsday