Axiom Space is scheduled to launch its fourth mission on Tuesday, June 10th. This is a mission CEO Tejpaul Bhatia called a “little victory lap.”
In addition to being the private space company’s fourth mission to the International Space Station, Bhatia said the AX-4 will be the second “complete national mission” of Axiom Space, a central government. In fact, the company has also called the mission “returning” to human spaceflights in India, Poland and Hungary.
Additionally, Bhatia said this will become the company’s first “break mission” after losing money in the first three. He emphasized that these ISS missions are “not our business model.” The company plans to add commercial modules to the ISS, which will eventually become independent and free-flying axioms.
At the same time, Bhatia said these initial missions will bring revenue and help explain the demand for commercial spaceflight. Additionally, they create an “Apollo moment” that appeals to each of their client countries.
“It shows how the space is open for commercial companies,” he said. “For all three countries, this will be their second astronaut, and it shows the switch from Space Race 1.0 to Space Race 2.0.”
So far, Axiom Space’s mission has used SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft to take astronauts to the ISS. According to Batia, the company’s role is to act as a “marketplace integrator and broker” who can bring these missions together. As the commercial space industry expands, he predicted there would be a great opportunity to continue to function as a “managed market” for space, as “no one can do this on his own.”
“To become a multi-planet, it doesn’t have all the capabilities in one country,” he added.
The outlook for commercial space travel hasn’t been seen that certainly in the past few days after the accusations between President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk declared that he had cancelled Musk’s government contracts and Musk’s Musk’s government contracts and abolished the Dragon’s spacecraft. (It seemed he later retreated.)
Axiom Space declined to comment on how the Trump Mask feud would affect the industry, but when Batia and I spoke in late May, I asked him a related question about the political landscape.
“Government investment is not opening up space,” Batya said. “They’re already doing that. (now) it’s entrepreneurs who use commercial platforms to build a bridge to the next stage.”
CEOs are actually relatively new to their current role. When we spoke, Bhatia said that after replacing the company’s co-founder, Dr. Kam Gaffarian, as chief executive, he was only in his fourth week at work. (Gafarian continues to serve as the company’s executive chairman.)
But Batia, previously an executive at Google Cloud, had already spent four years as the company’s chief revenue officer. His career didn’t focus specifically on the universe before joining the axiom space, but he was young so he said, “When I was fantasy, it was always about space.”
And, like the CEO of a good space company, Batia hopes to ultimately travel to the final frontier himself.
“I want to go,” he said. “There’s no doubt we’ll all go.”