A SpaceX rocket carrying four male passengers is set to blast off on Friday, setting the milestone of becoming the first-all private team of astronauts to ever be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in the times of space commercialization.

The four passengers chosen for the rocketship and orbital science mission of Axiom Space Inc are set for a launch at 11:17 am from NASA‘s Kennedy Space Center located in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

If the mission succeeds, the astronauts, led by NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, would reach the space station on Saturday as their SpaceX-supplied Crew Dragon capsule gets docked at the outpost some 400 kilometers above planet earth.

SpaceX, a private rocket company owned by Elon Musk, also offers the Falcon 9 launch vehicle for the propelling of the Crew Dragon. It also directs and overlooks mission control of the spacecraft from its headquarters situated near Los Angeles, California.

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According to Michael Suffredini, Axiom’s co-founder and CEO, the mission surpasses the recent space tourism fad.

“They’re not up there to paste their noses on the windows. They’re up there to do meaningful research, each in their own way,” Suffredini said during a pre-flight news briefing.

NASA has taken the responsibility of the astronauts once they arrive at the space station to undergo eight days of scientific and biomedical research.

The mission is a collaboration between Axiom, NASA and SpaceX and a major stepping stone in the recent expansion of commercial space travels.

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Commercial space tourism is popularly known as the low-Earth orbit economy, or “LEO economy” by space experts and insiders.

Although the space station has witnessed several civilian passengers take off from time to time, the Ax-1 mission commemorates the first all-commercial group of astronauts to use ISS as an orbiting laboratory.