Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe and his three fellow crew members have reached the International Space Station safely. There was a delay in docking because of a fault in the video tracking of the Dragon capsule carrying the four men, but the ground crew fixed the problem and the capsule docked. The mission to the space station, called AX-1, is the first mission for commercial spaceflight company Axiom Space. It was launched in a SpaceX Dragon capsule atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The mission will last ten days. Stibbe will carry out experiments to do with extended stays in space by human beings and their physical and psychological effects, and also the effect on vital equipment. He will also carry out experiments to do with space itself, such as monitoring gamma ray bursts using highly accurate sensors.
The mission also has an educational side. Stibbe will demonstrate to Israeli children, in Hebrew, how liquids behave in micro gravity, how different climatic regions of Earth look from space, and how festivals are celebrated on the space station. One of the questions he will answer is how it is possible to light Shabbat lights in space.
Various works of art will also be exhibited during the mission, for example a sculpture by artists Liat Segal and scientist Yasmine Meroz that attains its intended form only in conditions of zero gravity. Stibbe will also perform a work by Ohad Fishof called "Nothing in Space". This will probably be the only time that Stibbe will stop everything and look at the camera without doing anything. The rest of his stay in space will be almost non-stop action. Additional works of art will be exhibited in the space station and at the ground station site in Israel, and, in the spirit of the times, works of art connected to the event will be sold as NFT.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on April 10, 2022.
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