HWHAP Ep388 Private Astronaut Mission Management

Gary Jordan Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center. Episode 388, private astronaut mission management. I'm Gary Jordan, and I'll be your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers and astronauts, all to let you know what's going on in the world of human space flight and more closing in on almost 25 years of continuous human habitation, the International Space Station has served as a beacon for scientific discovery and technology demonstration, as well as a test bed for future operations. We've learned a lot in low Earth orbit, but one thing is clear is that there's so much more to learn. The International Space Station is not meant to last forever, though its value cannot be understated. So what comes next? Well, NASA is working with American commercial companies to own and operate their own space stations, and NASA can be one of many customers. While at face value, this may sound easy, there's a lot of groundwork needed to make this transition as smooth as possible. Part of this groundwork is understanding how NASA and commercial companies will operate together, the procedures, considerations, priorities, and, of course, the astronauts so to be ready for working together after the International Space Station is retired. The best place to learn how to do so is none other than the International Space Station. Enter private astronaut missions. Through these missions, private companies train astronauts for a mission to the International Space Station. Each mission has its own objectives, and with the upcoming AX4 mission, there are plenty, but it also serves as the perfect way to refine how NASA and commercial companies will ultimately work together to host private and government astronauts on the same space station. To describe how this all comes together, we're bringing in both perspectives into the studio to discuss how private astronaut missions are managed. A great conversation to have ahead of the upcoming private astronaut mission, axiom mission four, or AX4. On the NASA side, we have Derek Calvert, and on the Axiom Space side is Bryan Mitchell. They lead the integrated teams on each of their respective sides, government and private, to coordinate with each other to pull off the complex beast that is a private astronaut mission. So let's get into it, executing a private astronaut mission aboard the International Space Station with Derek Calvert and Bryan Mitchell. Enjoy. Gary Jordan Derek and Bryan, thank you so much for coming on. Houston, we have a podcast. It's a pleasure to have you guys on. Derek Calvert Thanks for having us. Bryan Mitchell Hey, thanks for having me. Gary Jordan Very interesting topic. We're gonna get into PAM mission management, private astronaut mission management, something that I have definitely been close to in my career, and we've talked about private astronaut missions in the past, but never from this unique perspective. Derek, I know I've gotten to work with you very closely on private astronaut missions before. Bryan, I'm interested to get into your role and how you've got to where you are. So why don't we start there, get our audience to know a little bit about each of you. Derek, why don't you start tell us about a little bit about yourself and how you got to be the private astronaut Mission Manager. Derek Calvert Yes, I started working for NASA in 2008 I graduated from the University of Alabama as a mechanical engineer and wasn't really sure what I want to do with my life. Knew I wanted to do something with in the space industry. So went on a series of interviews and found the one I liked, which was a flight controller position at the payload option Integration Center in Huntsville, Alabama, at Marshall Space Flight Center. So did that for a while. Eventually moved my family to Houston in 2019 to work here in the ISS program. I've worked in increment management and as a MER manager in the ISS program, and then got the opportunity to come manage private astronaut missions, and couldn't turn down an opportunity to see crewed space flight missions to ISS from beginning to end, from the start of signing an agreement to executing and operating the mission, to doing a debrief and wrap up. So it's a really unique opportunity that just couldn't pass up. Gary Jordan It's a lot of responsibility that you got over those years, right? Just starting in the Payload Operations Center. Next thing you know, you're leading the and the mission evaluation room, Mission engineering room, what's that? What's MER again? Derek Calvert Mission Evaluation Room, mission evaluation, the term manager there is a little bit misleading. There's, there's a team of managers, and we manage the engineering team in there working anomalies and and issues that come up with hardware in the International Space Station. So it's a great experience in terms of shoring up a technical understanding and engineering understanding of how space station works. And then, then, yeah, got the opportunity to come here and do some mission management. Gary Jordan University of Alabama, you said that you kind of knew you wanted to go into the space industry. Is that from childhood, or maybe some exposure in in college, Derek Calvert I grew up around it. Huntsville, Alabama is a kind of an epicenter in that, in that region for for space and defense work. So a lot of people, my dad worked in that growing up. A lot of my friends, their parents worked in it. So it's kind of something you grow up into, if that's what you want to go do. I started off as a pre med chemical engineer, and then took organic chemistry and decided that was the wrong path for me, and so went and did mechanical engineering just to give myself the most opportunities that I could possibly have coming out. Gary Jordan My brother did the same thing he wanted. He didn't know what he wanted to do. So we went mechanical because there's a lot of different places you can go, so definitely understand that mentality. Well, great to have you, and it's been a pleasure working with you, Bryan. Want to hear about your path to Axiom Space? Bryan Mitchell Yeah, absolutely. One thing that's common between Derek and I is that we are both extremely excited about the private astronaut missions and being able to conduct these human space flights to the International Space Station for myself and my background. I wasn't born here in Texas, but I've lived here almost my whole life, and grew up over in Austin, Texas, did my education there, got a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas, and after that, I worked in industry for a bit, and I wasn't having the best time there, and through some of the connections that I had made in college, ended up connecting with folks who were working supporting NASA at the Johnson Space Center here in Houston. Ended up pursuing those connections and opportunities here, ultimately got a job at the NASA Johnson Space Center as a flight controller for the ISS specifically responsible for the continuous, safe operations of the power and external thermal control systems. Spartan, Yep, you got it all right, cool. So, you know, after doing that for a number of years, I was wanting to sort of expand my knowledge of human space flight operations, and ended up taking opportunity to join the Axiom Space team ahead of the first private astronaut mission, the axiom one mission. And I've been with the company since successfully executing the axiom one, two and three mission, and then now here we are very excited for the upcoming fourth flight. Yeah, Gary Jordan that's right, and Mission Manager on the Axiom Space side, right? So we've got our way up in terms of level of responsibility, and as that level of insight that I'm hoping to dive into today with both of you is is very interesting relationship. I've gotten some close proximity in working with you guys on this, but it is so multi faceted, so multi layered. There's so much that has to come together to execute a private astronaut mission, and I want to understand that and exactly what has led to all of us coming together to work on this upcoming private astronaut mission, AX4 Derek, why don't you kind of get us a high level of Pam mission, Pam management, private astronaut mission management. What is that? Derek Calvert Yeah, so private astronaut missions are a commercially funded mission to ISS. Their short duration, one and a half to two weeks. Typically fly them on a certified us crew vehicle to ISS. They they have a wide range of objectives. There's typically research, education, outreach, commercial activities, things like that. So to execute something like that. You have to cover every aspect of human space flight. So for example, you need teams to support the food that the private astronauts are going to consume. So you've got to pull that together. You've got to work with the vehicle provider to make sure the vehicle is certified to come to space, and any issues or poke outs with that. And then the operations teams work hand in hand with the PAM provider, with axiom to develop flight plans that can be executed on board. ISS, there's IT support type functionality that has to be has to be done. So there's everything that you have to do to execute operations on what ISS gets done for a PAM it just gets done on a quicker scale, sometimes a little bit smaller scale, and it gets done with a different integrate. Different integrated team. In this case, we're working hand in hand with the PAM provider to kind of pull those things together. Gary Jordan So maybe it makes sense to dive a little bit more into how it works, just for a, let's just say, a NASA mission, an Expedition mission, that's what we do. It's, it's flying astronauts up to the International Space Station to do long duration missions for science, research, technology development. So, so talk a little bit about the management of a mission like that, and then just maybe little nuggets of how private astronaut missions slightly differ. Derek Calvert Yeah, so private astronaut missions are unique in terms of we, the same team works the space flight, the transit from launch to ISS, and then from from undock to landing. The same teams that work that, from a NASA perspective, also support the on orbit operations the two weeks that we're working on board ISS. So for a CCP mission, a crewed mission, so you have the. The CCP program that executes the vehicle side of it, the launching of the vehicle and the return of the vehicle. And then the ISS side kind of handshakes and takes that over once they enter the ISS approach, ellipsoid, then they kind of take over the lead role in that for Pams, it is, we work with the PAM provider on the launch and return aspects, and then the same team also supports the actual mission itself, working through the objectives and the activities on board the ISS. So it is, it is a complete ends to end task, as opposed to where you might have a little bit more of a definition between different programs at NASA for a CCP man flight. Gary Jordan Hmm interesting. Okay, so that's where you come in, Bryan. So basically what Derek is saying, Bryan, you have to handle a lot of the training for the astronauts and the preparation to make sure that these private astronauts have a ride to what Derek is working on the International Space Station. Bryan Mitchell Yeah, absolutely. And I think the way that we approach these flights is similar to Derek's mentioning, but it's end to end management of a short duration human space flight mission. And so that starts with, you know, paperwork, signing the agreements that enable us to have this opportunity. And then it very quickly transitions to engaging with our customers, to sign agreements, to understand their mission objectives. And then once that has been identified, we start looking for crew members, and then working crew member training on top of our operations and planning integration teams, and point them together to understand our customers mission objectives, what they want to accomplish on this flight, and then start to engage with the NASA community to integrate ourselves for a variety of things, like on orbit research or outreach and media events, things that we're actually going to execute on board the space station, and so we're really trying to take full ownership as much as we can for being able to execute a human space flight mission, because that's something that's going to be really important to us here in Axiom Space as we prepare and look ahead to the operation of a commercial space station. Gary Jordan Right. Eventually, you know, when we and this could be a topic we can adjust later, is, is the evolution of the low Earth orbit landscape and commercial destinations and everything. Eventually, private companies like Axiom Space will have to do this on their own. What you're saying, Bryan is, yeah, it's not just the ride. It's the entire mission, top to bottom, but, but Derek, they have to play by your rules when they're on the International Space Station. They have to be trained to operate safely and work right next to the Expedition crew that the NASA astronauts that have their own mission objectives, Derek Calvert Right, We have kind of parallel goals here. We want to enable the axiom, in this case, to execute their mission on board. Their mission on board ISS, we want them to be able to accomplish their objectives, do their things, but we also want to protect the ability for the ISS mission to continue alongside of that. So the goal is, how can we enable as much as we possibly can for axiom, while also minimizing the impact on the ISS crew that lives and works there full time, because they need to keep achieving their objectives. They need to keep doing their research. They need to keep doing the maintenance that keeps ISS flying. So the goal is to is to minimize the impact to the crew that lives and works there for long duration missions, while also enabling as much as we can on the axiom side so that they can be as successful, and that includes working with our international partners. Because we don't, we don't just fly up there, and it's not just a NASA effort. We have an European module in Japan and Japanese module. We have to work with our ESA and JAXA counterparts to integrate it all together so that because there's facilities that that axiom wants access to and wants to use that are in those modules, so we have to work on that as well. Gary Jordan We’re getting a flavor of, really the level of coordination that it takes to be a private astronaut mission manager that I really wanted to dive into, how multi layered it is. If you Okay, so, so Bryan, for for Axiom Space, and the astronauts there, they have their own objectives. Like you said, you're working with all of the different customers they want to accomplish x, in the short in the mission that they have for an upcoming mission, let's just, let's just say AX4 well, they have to play by the rules of the International Space Station, and with that comes, okay, you Derek talking to all the international partners, making sure they're okay with the different hardware and facilities, making sure that you're working with the mission managers For the Expedition crew make sure you you know the whole landscape of the International Space Station. What can and cannot be done. That's a lot of coordination. I think most of your job, most of your time, is pulling all the different pieces together to make this work. Derek Calvert Yes, that's, that's what we do. Is we, a simple way to say it is, we. Represent axioms interest to the broader NASA international partner community. On board ISS, we are advocating for them to be able to do as much as they possibly can, to achieve as many of their objectives as they can. And the really nice thing about these private astronaut missions is it it pushes, pushes NASA to stretch and do things that we haven't considered doing them, or at least do them in a way that we haven't considered doing them before. So that's a really valuable thing for NASA as an organization, is to get new and fresh perspectives and think about the way we do things new and differently. So we advocate to our NASA and our international partner counterparts on axioms behalf, and then we turn around and we represent NASA and the ISS programs interest back to axiom. So for things that, like you said, the rules and things that we care a great deal about, to preserve the safety of the vehicle and the crew and and to enable efficient operations on board ISS, we are then the voice of the ISS program, and NASA back to the to axiom or to the PAM provider. And so there's, there's a delicate balance, and there's a give and take there, because you want to you want to lean forward and do as much new and exciting things as you can. But you also want to make sure you're keeping in mind that the things you've learned and the lessons you've learned, sometimes in hard ways, operating ISS for as long as we have Gary Jordan right? The safe operations is definitely a key component. Yes. So we can get into some of the meat and meat and potatoes of how exactly we we bring all these components together. Bryan, you mentioned being responsible for the end to end. Let's, let's talk about the end to end. From the from the training aspect, the preparation aspect, when we start at the beginning, when it starts. Okay, we got an upcoming mission. We want to execute this, AX4 mission. We want to execute AX4 where do you start? Bryan Mitchell First start by identifying key customers that are going to be flying on the short duration space flight. So with us sponsoring flight with our own commander, in this case, the upcoming flight, Peggy Whitson, we have three primary customers on the flight. It's going to be India, Poland and Hungary. And so with those international organizations, we start to engage in discussions about what they can accomplish with having an opportunity to conduct a mission aboard the space station for about 14 days, and that's going to be a combination of research activities on orbit, media engagement. It's going to be imagery that enable them to share that mission with the world. And so it's really a series of conversations and discussions over a period of months with the axiom internal experts, and then once we have sort of understood those key objectives, we then engage with the NASA community to understand their key set of constraints and then find a way compromise to figure out how we can accomplish what Our customers seek to achieve on the flight. Gary Jordan So, yeah, that you want, it's the who, and then it's the it's the what, right, yeah, who, who is gonna go, and what is exactly you want to do. That's where you start. So, but then, if this needs to happen very early, right? This needs to happen a lot in a decent amount of time, in advance of an actual launch, Bryan Mitchell Yeah, I think for these flights, it's about a year or so, which, again, speaking to something that Derek mentioned earlier, that's really a more compressed timeframe than I think we might consider for standard increment ISS operations, or just a standard integration of a singular payload, for example, depending on the complexity that might be an investigation that's something that gets integrated over multiple years. And instead, with our customers and they they join our team, we're really looking at a 12 month or less period. Gary Jordan So you're getting approached Derek like a year in advance. Bryan's coming to you. He's saying, Hey, here's who I want to fly and here's what we're going to do on station. What's your next move. Derek Calvert So we take the list of people that they want to fly, and we put them through an ISS program process to get approval for them to fly that includes testings and evaluations that axiom does and provides us the results for and so we go through that process and we vet and approve them to fly at ISS, and that requires the approval of all of our partners, so that is a process that all of our International Space Station partners are involved in. So while that's going on, we're also talking about the mission and the objectives. The payloads teams at axiom are working with the research integration teams here at Johnson and at Marshall to start putting together the research complement. What are we going to do? What's it going to take? What does that look like onboard? ISS, how much time do I need? What facilities do I need access to? All of those things start getting planned. That also includes building out your training timeline, because there is a standard set of training that all crew that come to ISS have to take. And. It's just how to live and work in space, in that environment. Then there's payload specific and operation specific training that based on what the customers want to do. There's other training they have to sign up for. They're also working with their transportation provider at that time, and we just were starting to build the mission at that point, where there's food tasting to see which items of the menu they might want to fly that they would enjoy eating for two weeks in space. So we're doing all of those things, and then we're just kind of iterating on our process to take this from a conceptual mission on a piece of paper to a fully realized mission ready for execution with all the intricacy that that takes on board. ISS Gary Jordan that's a lot to pull together, all the different, yeah, if you want to do a specific research that might take place in a specific facility, now you have to have that facility as part of their training right? Now, when it comes to training, this is something you're responsible for, right? So you are, you're hearing, you're you're pitching this to Derek. Derek saying, Okay, well, this is what you have to do. You have to add this into your compliment. So now you are working with your teams to build the training to make sure you're meeting all the requirements for a safe mission to and from the International Space Station. So what does that look like? Bryan Mitchell Yeah, I was really hoping I'd have an opportunity to talk about training because, you know, as Derek was talking about the processing and acceptance of a crew member, you know, because of our compressed timeline, we're working multiple things in parallel, integration and payloads being an example, approval of the crew members and other but we, with the crew members that have been identified, already start to have them conduct a training flow. And so that's going to be a combination of training with NASA, maybe let Derek expand on that in a bit, but also with our launch vehicle provider, SpaceX, and so to prepare the crew members to be able to safely and effectively fly the SpaceX Dragon to and from the International Space Station, there's a whole training campaign with SpaceX that's a combination of like classroom based Laney learning engagements also hands on simulator practice, and then that builds all the way up into full mission simulations. And again, the crew members are getting instruction on Dragon specific systems, like the life support systems, like the navigation systems and also communications protocols. And so we have NASA training, we have SpaceX training, and then on top of that, we actually are able to partner with some of the ISS international partners, like ESA, the European Space Agency and JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, and send our crew members over to conduct module specific training that will increase the crew members awareness of the ISS their expertise, and then enable them to execute some of these activities for their 14 day mission aboard the space station. Gary Jordan There you go. So it's like you one way or another, you have the who and you have the what you want to accomplish, but there are these set items that really need to be checked off in order to safely fly one way or another. You're going to fly the SpaceX Dragon to and from the International Space Station. Let's get that done right while we're waiting and working all of these different things concurrently. You know, we need to make sure that we have familiarization with the modules they're going to go into those modules. Let's go send them around the around the globe. Let's go send them to Europe. Let's go send them to to Japan and get that familiarization. So you're already working. Like you said, this is, this is the complication that I really appreciate about private astronaut mission management, is the things working in parallel, while you're working, the agreements, while you're working, the specifics, you're getting stuff done. Because you have a timeline and a year. It may sound like a long time, but when you kind of go into the depth of just how much is being accomplished in the year. It really is. It really is a lot, right? And one way or another, Derek was some of the NASA training, right? No matter what you do on the International Space Station, you have to be familiar with the systems, with the emergency procedures. There are baseline things that you have to do independent of whatever your specific mission objectives are, and that training can happen, can happen early too. That's it's part of a mission requirement. Derek Calvert That's right, yeah, we have a baseline level of training that we require the private astronauts to go through just to live and work on board. ISS. We actually have a couple different flavors of that, depending on how much they want to know on some optional systems. But there is a baseline level. And then they have to go to to Huntsville and do their payloads training there. As Bryan mentioned, they've got USCV training with with their with SpaceX, and they've got their own training they do another reason why the international partner module training is is important, for example, is we have crew that sleep. They camp out in these international modules. So it's not just a place where they float into and they do some work and then they leave. That's actually their their home for two weeks. That's where they're sleeping. So it's important that they they get comfortable with the different systems in those modules as well. So training is a complicated puzzle to put together. And Bryan's team does a great job in working with our FOD training team and training teams that at Marshall international partners to kind of build that schedule. And if you go look at it, from the time their training starts until just prior to mission, they are constantly on the go, going to these different organizations, these different places to get to get training, and it is a definitely a months long process that they're doing in parallel with all the work the mission teams are doing to actually build the mission they're going to execute once they get there. Gary Jordan Of course the private astronauts are a huge component of private astronaut mission management. There's a lot that goes into that, right? But in terms of the research objectives, right? Of course, you have the you have the astronauts actually conducting the research. But that could be, that could be a task to actually source from multiple different countries, understand the requirements and then fit that into whatever the capabilities are of the International Space Station and the timeline. Because, of course, there's other astronauts on station trying to do science at the same exact time. So Bryan is probably a, you know, not only working with the astronauts to get them familiarization with actually executing the science, but you're working with scientists around the globe, likely that and understanding exactly what is pulling together to accomplish the research objectives, Bryan Mitchell yeah, absolutely. We're super excited for the research on this flight. Just to give a few metrics, we've got about 60 research investigations that we've been integrated for the flight. And of those 60, that's representative of about 30 different nations across the world. And so, you know, not only do we have a high quantity of research investigations. They are represented by people you know, all over the world, and so we're excited, because this is more research than we've ever integrated on private astronaut flight, and we're able to work with partners in more regions around the world, which will enable us to really increase the global impact of the research that we're conducting. Gary Jordan Very nice, yeah, and that probably, and there's a lot to that, right? So you have to pull that all together, execute it in a very specific amount of time. Now, I'm not sure if all of that, if the research that they carry to and from the International Space Station goes under their seats, right? A lot of this has to be coordinated and and Derek, I'm sure you're working very closely with with Axiom Space to figure out exactly how to fly the research. Derek Calvert Yeah, that's a that's a complicated picture at times to figure out. And so you can just think about logistically, and the logistics of getting something physically from a point on the earth to the International Space Station. I mean, as Bryan talked about, we've got many nations involved in doing this. That means you're sourcing hardware, sourcing samples, sourcing these things from different places across the globe. You've got to get it all to the launch provider. You got to get it to KSC, and you got to fly it to ISS and then you got to get it home, and you got to distribute it back out to all those people. So that's an immense logistical problem to go tackle. I think for this flight, we're flying almost all of the research for the axiom for mission on the axiom for vehicle. We do we have in the past, occasionally flown research or other support hardware on a US cargo vehicle. We've done that in the past. We can pre position things like that, and that's something else we coordinate with. And it's hard enough to do all of these things if you've got one specific period of time in your mind that when the when this mission is going to fly. The The challenging part about private astronaut missions or one of the challenging parts is, with it being a short duration mission, it can get moved around some, and that there can be a multitude of reasons for that, but you can, you can plan all, plan your mission for six months, expecting it to launch at a certain time, and then it moves a little bit. So it's just then you get to go back and revisit some of the assumptions you made. You mentioned the facility availability. If you're planning on something being available, it might not, so you have to go and adjust to all that. So there is that iteration that the NASA and the axiom teams do to adjust to the real world, real world circumstances. Gary Jordan Right, that's a lot of work. Bryan Mitchell Yeah, and just to add on to that and explain some of the complexity in the coordination that we're doing. So for this flight, with a large majority of all the cargo coming up on the flight, the cargo and the SpaceX Dragon is crew. Dragon is relatively limited, right? And we've got agreements with NASA to fly things. We have agreements with SpaceX where they're flying things, and then we have what we axiom are going to fly as well as our customers. And so there's ultimately a limited space in the vehicle and a whole bunch of different interest, you know, vying for it. And so we need to be able to appropriately disposition and. And determine how we can most effectively utilize basically every available space in the dragon to be able to accomplish the large quantity of objectives that we've been talking about in flight. Gary Jordan That's right. Derek Calvert And Bryan, I know, set you up for something here. We haven't really talked about who the crew is on this flight yet, but I think one of the other exciting things about research on these axiom flights, this being your fourth one is you've got some repeat investigations, right? You've got some things that you've done on previous flights. That axiom 4 is building on and pushing further? Bryan Mitchell Yeah absolutely. So I can speak to one of those investigations, which is cancer and low Earth orbit. For this flight, it's going to be a number three. So we're building on and validating results from previous investigations, and this experiment specifically is looking at the growth of cancer cells in the space environment, in the microgravity environment, and then comparing that with terrestrial samples. And then in that comparison, seeking to better understand the differences in those cancer cell growths, and ultimately wants to improve cancer treatments for all of us here on the ground. And so the research is getting conducted in orbit and on the ground, but the ultimate goal is to bring back that scientific learning for everybody here on the ground. Gary Jordan Very cool, yeah. So it's multifaceted, and over those long periods of time, I know, talking with many researchers, more data is always better than less, right? And that's that's certainly a challenge, especially with like Derek was saying, you have, you have this certain cadence of missions, but they can move around too, so you have to kind of adjust with the punches there really quickly. I want to dive into the mission operations. I think this is an interesting component of bringing missions together, right? It's Bryan, you're responsible for the entire mission, start to finish. But it you know, with that, we're working with the Mission Control in Houston. That is 24/7 operations, monitoring the International Space Station. You, of course, have your own objectives and your own mission control so how do you guys work together to actually execute a mission from the ground? Bryan Mitchell Well, I can speak to the axiom side. So building on the years of experience that NASA has accumulated, we recognize that a Mission Control Center is an essential facility and asset that enables the success of these human space flight missions. And so over the course of the previous axiom private astronaut missions, we've been able to build up our control center, build up that facility, and establish voice and video connections with the Houston Mission Control Center. And that key facility is what allows us to house experts on the ground, a flight control team that's going to be able to engage with the NASA flight control team and international partner flight control teams as well as our launch vehicle provider flight control team. All of that in order to enable us to be able to effectively follow along with the mission in real time and help support the execution of those objectives from the ground, but also directly supporting the crew members on orbit. Derek Calvert Yeah, I think it's another integration challenge where we've got control centers across the world that do ISS operations every day, and so we want to take the axiom control team and integrate them into that environment for the for the two weeks they're flying. So there's a lot of work that goes into making sure that the ground procedures that we have at the processes that we use for planning and then replanning and adjusting to things on orbit for anomaly resolution, if there's a piece of hardware, for example, that axiom is planning on using to accomplish one of their objectives, and if we have issues or problems with it, then how do we get that fixed? How do we make sure axiom is involved in the discussions to get that fixed? Axiom, one of the ways that these private astronaut missions have really pushed us, pushed our ISS operations teams and and program teams. Is axiom is bringing forward some new ways to do information technology and some new communication tools and some new uses for for personal computing devices. And so it's all looking forward for them to what they want to do for their segment. But for us, it's a good it's a good stretching activity to go see how do we do these things with with different tools and new tools. And so there's an infrastructure in place to support all that. The onboard network is has been redone to help accommodate that. And so all of these things have to work together. We have to keep all of the normal ISS flight control teams across the world synced up with the axiom of flight control team while they're there. And that takes a lot of pre planning and a lot of discussion about procedures and interfaces and processes, and because you can't, you can't build them just for axiom, because they have to work both with and without axiom there. So you have to be smart about how you how you integrate a pan provider into that world. Gary Jordan It's interesting, yeah, and I think it's a nice preview and nice pre. Practice for how operations in low Earth orbit may happen in the future, right? So, so working together is right now is essential to figure out those little things and to make it all that more efficient when it actually is time to work together, public and private. Let's go into AX4. Let's talk about the crew complement, the mission objectives. Bryan, what is, who is on AX4. Bryan Mitchell So the Axiom four crew is led by Commander Peggy Whitson, and she is an extremely decorated former and astronaut NASA astronaut. She's had a 38 year career at NASA, three long duration space flights, served as chief of the astronaut office. Currently holds the longest time and space for any American astronaut, and so we're just incredibly grateful to have her as the leader of our crew for this upcoming flight. In terms of our pilot, we have Shubhanshu Shukla. He's a fighter pilot from India, and he's actually been selected as one of four Indian astronauts to participate in one of their upcoming inaugural human space flight missions. So very excited to have him on board as well. Also we have Mission Specialist Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, who's a scientist and engineer who was originally part of the ESA reserve astronaut class has now been upgraded to an ESA project astronaut with his selection for the axiom four flight, he's held a key position with the Large Hadron Collider as engineer in charge. So again, very knowledgeable individual, grateful to have him here for this flight. And then lastly, our mission specialist, Timor Kapu. He's a mechanical engineer from Hungary. He was selected from the Hungarian to orbit program. Their core objective actually is to be able to send a human up to the International Space Station. And so we're really excited that through this flight, we're able to directly execute on the human organization's mission objective. Gary Jordan This is certainly a theme of AX4 and recent private astronaut missions we've seen a variety of countries fly to the International Space Station. It is a nice, it's a nice way to capture just how expansive, you know, the international participation in human space flight can be. You know, you have, you have countries that have not, you know, I think a few astronauts have not had an astronaut fly to the International Space Station yet. So it's an inaugural flight to the space station. We're involving more countries in human space flight. Bryan Mitchell Yeah, And to add on that, you're absolutely correct. So our three partner nations on this flight India, Poland and Hungary, they have had a government sponsored human space flight mission in the past, but that's been over 40 years ago, and so you're correct. This will be their second human space flight mission, but their first opportunity to visit the International Space Station. Derek Calvert One of the real rewarding things, I think, as a NASA person working these missions is getting to see the excitement in these countries that haven't done this before, or at least haven't done it in a really long time, and how new and exciting it is to fly someone to space. And so it's, it's really rewarding and exciting to see, especially around the launch, when they're when they're so enthusiastic and and overwhelmed about what, what their country is doing. And so that's, that's a really rewarding part of working these missions, from a NASA perspective, is being able to see these, these countries that are doing it for the first time, or at least doing it for the first time in a really long time. Gary Jordan Absolutely, I've seen it. Yeah, definitely working really closely with the private astronaut Mission Teams, you know, working and get working with and my colleagues over in Axiom Space, seeing the reaction in Israel, in Saudi Arabia. And just like how the public is reacting to some of this is it kind of gives you an appreciation because, we're to take it for granted, right? We've had continuous human presence on the International Space Station now for almost 25 years. It's a long time to have continuous US presence in space, and so it can be easy to just take that for granted, but it's amazing. And to involve other countries, it's just, uh, it's certainly inspirational. Now, interestingly enough, it's not just these four astronauts that will be on the International Space Station. It's going to be, it's going to be quite cramped. We got expedition 73 up there. Derek, you have to work with the expedition 73 crew and make sure that they can be they are welcoming the our the new guests to the International Space Station and finding room for them to sleep. Derek Calvert Yeah, our operations team does a great job of preparing the crew that's there. They have briefings leading up to the axiom for launch about what their what their mission is going to look like. You know, what are things that are maybe slightly different from the baseline when having a private astronaut mission on board? So they do a lot of work on the front end to prep our crew for their arrival. Our crew does a lot of work to get ready for their arrival. And then when you see the Vehicle Dock and the hatch open, and you see how excited everyone is to welcome them, because the same thing we're talking about seeing it on the ground, and how excited the folks on the ground are watching this launch and are paying attention to what's going on, it's it's just to see the joy from the private astronauts when they arrive, and our crew are receiving them, and then they work together for two weeks. As much as we would love to say the ISS crew is doing their mission and the axiom crew is doing their mission, and there's not a lot of overlap. There is there's support that has to happen. We have a crew member that is basically responsible for making sure that action crew is familiar with ISS. They're their kind of primary ISS crew point of contact, so that they have questions. And how does I'm looking for something that can't find it. How does this work? You know, what do I do? In this case, they have a person up there, the current ISS crew they can talk to. Of course, Peggy has a lot of experience being on ISS, but sometimes having the, having someone that's living up there right now can provide a little bit extra perspective. So they they do that, and and then, of course, and then downtime. One of the fun things from the mission is always seeing how the crews spend their downtime together, and what they do when, when they're off the clock, after hours, and they've done a full day of ops, what? How do these crews enjoy each other's company and hang out together? That's always an interesting thing to see as the mission goes. Gary Jordan That’s right, yeah, how are 11 people going to compete for space in the cupola? Who gets that Prime Access that view of the Earth is just, you know, you get 14 days. It sounds like a long time, but it's not a lot of time to soak in those views, right? So, so you really, and I think there's a lot of activities that happen there. A lot of them like to just sit there and take some, take some, take some of the views in I know there's a lot of photography, Bryan, you mentioned imagery is a huge component of this. And I'm just and they get shared all over the world. Bryan Mitchell Agreed. And you know, there are instances of pre coordinated and scheduled activities where we're taking imagery of the Earth, but we also, as much as we can advocate for our crew members when they go up and fly, take an opportunity to use the cupola and view the Earth and really ingest that perspective, because that perspective is going to be really important when they come back to Earth and are engaging with people all around the world to share that experience. Gary Jordan Very cool. Yeah, so we're excited for the AX4 crew. This is a another mission of science and and outreach. There's going to be plenty of outreach activities. I know our team really, really gets invested in helping to execute a lot of those. An interesting component on this mission, Derek, and maybe you can expand, is the relationship with ISRO, the Indian Space Agency, if you don't mind expanding on that. Derek Calvert Yeah, every PAM mission has a unique, at least one unique thing or new thing that we're doing. Most of them have more than one, but there's there's always at least one. In this case, one of the unique things we're doing is NASA is partnering with ISRO on some objectives during this mission. This all stems from an agreement that was signed back in June of 2023 between President Biden and Prime Minister Modi. It's a multifaceted agreement, but one of those areas is flying an ISRO astronaut to the ISS. The way that ultimately became fulfilled was through this seat on the axiom four mission. And so as part of that, we have a bilateral agreement between the Indian and United States government where we're doing some joint payloads, five of them, in fact, that NASA sponsoring and working with India on completing onboard the assets we've never done, co sponsored research to this level on an axiom mission or private astronaut mission before. We're going to do a joint PAO event that includes both one of our expedition astronauts on board and Shuks when he arrives. And then we'll have some ground participation from the NASA and ISRO space agencies. So this is a new thing that we're doing to kind of foster collaboration and partnership between NASA and ISRO and so that comes with its own unique challenges, and how we integrate that with axiom, because ISRO is also doing a lot of other things with axiom as as any crew member flying on a private astronaut mission would do so as part of that work that we have to do in the lead up to the mission, we have to understand how NASA axiom and ISRO are going to work together across these multiple areas of responsibility and integrate that into hopefully something that's really seamless during the mission. That's if we've if we've done our job correctly, there won't, you won't be able to see where one begins and the other end. It'll be a seamless mission for Shuks to execute, and a seamless thing for the for ground audiences to to follow along with very Gary Jordan much looking forward to that. And I know at the very end of the mission, SpaceX Dragon will undock, and we may see this crew be the first in SpaceX Dragon capsule to splash down in the Pacific Ocean. So it'll be interesting to see. And I know there's been evolving operations on the SpaceX side that have led to ensuring that that is all squared away. And Bryan and maybe, maybe this crew that splashes down in the Pacific, Bryan Mitchell not to correct, but I think the SpaceX team actually conducted another private flight Fram2 mission where they returned on the Pacific coast. You're right. So I'd see this as the second for them to return, but recognizing that there's a shift in recovery operations from the east coast the United States, the West Coast, is definitely important. And so we've been collaborating with SpaceX and NASA to understand the new splashdown locations, to understand key medical facilities that could be available if we needed them to understand how the vehicle is going to be recovered and moved to a point where crew members can be extracted, where we can get key cargo out of the flight and process it over in California, for ourselves, for for NASA, for our customers, Gary Jordan I should, I should have clarified from the International Space Station. That was, that was my bad, yeah, just very excited for this upcoming mission. It's going to be, is going to be, certainly an interesting one. I want to sort of wrap up by, by thinking about how a lot of this coordination is very important and leads to something greater. You know, I think it's one thing to work together and actually look at all the details of how this actually gets put together, which I certainly appreciate. It's the primary reason I wanted to have you guys here is to really go into the details. So our audience certainly appreciates the level of coordination that has to go into this to execute a private astronaut mission, but it leads to something more. Right? We're building a future together public and private. Derek, if you don't mind expanding on that a little bit, just why working together and managing a mission that includes public and private, a public, you know, entity like NASA and a private company like SpaceX, to work together and execute a mission in low Earth orbit together. Why that's important? The Derek Calvert one of the primary reasons we do private astronaut missions is we want to encourage commercialization of low Earth orbit. For a long time. Throughout our history, low Earth orbit's been a place where governments have gone. We've flown missions there, starting with mercury up through shuttle, and then we've built space station there. It has been a place for government sponsored activities to go. The next step in that evolution is to make it a place where companies and commercial interests can, can go and find value and find things that are, are worthwhile, that they can, they can find worthy of making an investment in low Earth orbit. So the reason why we, we do Pams, is to start that process. We want to, we want to enable objectives and get things done. Now, we want to accomplish commercial things onboard ISS now, but we also want to help build the skills and the expertise that that NASA has learned, that other government agents have learned, that have done this for a long time, pass those things along to these other companies to help hopefully prepare them to be successful and commercializing low Earth orbit. And I think that's that's the forward path right for us, is we, NASA, is going to continue to be involved in low Earth orbit, but it's going to be in a different way. It's going to be in partnership with these, with commercial companies, and so the the relationships and the expertise and the capabilities that we build now are instrumental in the coming years to continue working in low Earth orbit for the benefit of all, all humankind. Yeah, Gary Jordan it's certainly something that resonates with me, right? You don't just, you don't just stop the thing that you're doing and then start something brand new, right? You have to learn International Space Station being the perfect platform to really get this done, as there's a lot that has been learned on the space station. It's a laboratory, first for scientific objectives to be accomplished, for technology development, but also just to learn how to better work together. Like you said, we've done it with with other countries for years you go into Mission Control right now, it looks seamless, right? You kind of everybody's working together. Everybody kind of knows how things works because we've done it, because we've had rehearsal in doing it. So we're just getting that experience now. And I'm sure you're experiencing that too, Bryan in the lead up to what Axiom Space wants to accomplish, Bryan Mitchell absolutely. So I think that by collaborating with government agencies like NASA and private companies that Axiom Space is able to help enable access to the International Space Station and other low Earth orbit opportunities to groups of people who haven't traditionally had that access, and that's things like National astronauts, private individuals, but also researchers and manufacturers around the world when we talk about the research compliment that we've had, and then, you know, to compliment amplify what Derek's saying all the all these activities are helping with that key transition from government sponsored activities in low Earth orbit to a thriving commercial space economy that will be able to sort of follow the footsteps of the government sponsored space programs and then be successful, because we have been coordinating with the key experts who have been doing this for so long. Gary Jordan It is a very important thing. We're all building a future together, and it's nice to have you both seated here to subscribe how it's working together. If I didn't call out in the beginning that Derek, you're with NASA and Bryan, you're with Axiom Space, I think you would think we were all part of one big team, and we are, but and that's how that really, that really comes together. So Derek and Bryan, I certainly appreciate you coming on Houston We Have a Podcast today and describing all the intricate work that you do, I certainly have a deep appreciation for it, because I've been in the trenches with you guys making it work. So thank you for coming on and sharing it with our audience. Bryan Mitchell Thanks so much. Derek Calvert Thanks Gary, <Outro Music> Gary Jordan Hey, thanks for sticking around. I hope you learned something new today. You can check out the latest from around the agency at nasa.gov and you can find our full collection of episodes and all of the other wonderful NASA podcasts and nasa.gov/podcasts. On social media we're on the Johnson Space Center pages of Facebook, X and Instagram. If you have any questions for us or suggestions for future episodes, email us at NASA-Houstonpodcast@mail.nasa.gov This interview was recorded on May 9, 2025. Our producer is Dane Turner, audio engineers are Will Flato and Daniel Tohill. And our social media is managed by Dominique Crespo. Houston We Have a Podcast was created and is supervised by me Gary Jordan. Thanks to Anna Schneider and Alexis Dejarnette for helping to bring this episode to life. And of course, thanks again to Derek Calvert and Bryan Mitchell for taking the time to come on the show give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you're listening to us on, and tell us what you think of our podcast. We'll be back next week.