The first crew to visit the International Space Station composed entirely of private citizens is on its way. Axiom-1 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center this morning on a 10-day mission. The four men will spend eight of those days on the ISS conducting experiments and seeing the sights, joining an international crew of seven professional astronauts already there. All together, the 11 astronauts and cosmonauts represent the United States, Russia, Germany, Israel, Canada and Spain.

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NASA’s Inspector General released two reports in the past two days. The first addresses management of the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) Mission, a robotic rover that will search for water ice on the Moon. The second looks more broadly at how the agency manages programs that have more than one deliverable, particularly the Artemis program that will put astronauts back on the Moon.

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has withdrawn SpaceX’s application to expand its Boca Chica, TX test site because the company failed to provide required information requested last year. The environmental evaluation by the Corps is in addition to a separate ongoing environmental review by the Federal Aviation Administration.

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Three top U.S. and European launch service providers have won contracts to launch more than 3,000 satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, a constellation of satellites to provide global high-speed broadband services. It will be a competitor to SpaceX’s better-known Starlink system and SpaceX notably is not included in the deal.

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Axiom-1, the first U.S.-sponsored private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, remains on track for launch this Friday. NASA agreed to give way before resuming the Wet Dress Rehearsal test for the Artemis I mission. Using adjacent launch pads at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the launch and the test cannot take place the same day. Axiom-1 has been postponed twice so NASA could conduct the test, but after two scrubs the agency is stepping aside.

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NASA’s Wet Dress Rehearsal test of the Space Launch System rocket for the first Artemis launch scrubbed for a second time today. This is the first test of all the SLS components and problems are hardly unexpected. What makes it newsworthy is how busy NASA and its two launch pads at Kennedy Space Center are these days so a delay on one impacts whatever is happening on the other. In this case it’s the launch of the first U.S.-sponsored private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, Axiom-1. …

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of April 3-9, 2022 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

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Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space program, issued yet another series of tweets complaining that sanctions imposed by the United States and others could lead to Russia’s withdrawal from the International Space Station. Some media outlets are misconstruing his remarks as posing an immediate threat to the program, but he said only that he would soon make recommendations to his government on the timing of when Russia might end its participation. Meanwhile, NASA officials insist all the ISS partners, including Russia, are making progress on extending the ISS to 2030.

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It’s a human spaceflight extravaganza. Mark Vande Hei got home to Houston this morning after almost a year on the International Space Station as two more crews get ready to head there and Blue Origin successfully completed its first suborbital passenger flight to space this year. Once the province of only a carefully selected few, space is increasingly becoming accessible to a broader swath of explorers.

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NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei returned to Earth this morning after a record 355 days in space, surpassing Scott Kelly’s 340 days. The landing of Soyuz MS-19 comes at a time of tense U.S.-Russian relationships because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but all operations appeared normal as Vande Hei and two Russian colleagues set foot on the steppes of Kazakhstan.

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