Space mission with Pole aboard launched successfully
After several delays, Axiom Mission 4, a commercial flight to the International Space Station (ISS) with Poland's Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski aboard, was successfully launched on Wednesday.
The spaceflight is coordinated by the US space agency NASA, US space infrastructure developer Axiom Space, and US billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX, which provides the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft.
The astronaut team comprising Uznanski-Wisniewski, Peggy Whitson from the US, Shubhanshu Shukla from India and Tibor Kapu representing Hungary, lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Wednesday at 2:31am EDT.
"We got it! Poland has reached for the stars," Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on the X platform following the launch.
"Today, we are taking a huge step toward Poland's technological future," Uznanski-Wisniewski said from the spacecraft. "A Poland based on science, knowledge and vision."
President Andrzej Duda also welcomed the mission's start. "May this flight become an inspiration for young Poles, those who bravely dream of seemingly impossible things," he wrote on X. "Today, Poland is once again part of a great history."
The original launch date was May 29, but it has since been rescheduled several times due to technical problems with the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon spacecraft, and recently, the repair work in the orbital laboratory's Zvezda service module, as well as unfavourable weather conditions.
The crew is expected to spend 14 days aboard the ISS, researching the effects of microgravity on humans, future fuels, and Earth observation. Uznanski-Wisniewski will also take part in the Polish IGNIS mission, which will carry out 13 scientific experiments covering medicine, biology, biotechnology and other scientific fields.
Uznanski-Wisniewski will become the first Pole to visit the ISS and is the second Polish person who has travelled to space after Miroslaw Hermaszewski's flight aboard the Soviet Soyuz 30 spacecraft in 1978. (PAP) aj/mf
