Запуск місії Ax-4, Axiom Space's fourth private flight to the International Space Station (ISS), was delayed due to the discovery of a liquid oxygen leak in the Falcon booster 9. As reported by the company SpaceX late in the evening 10 June, the new launch date will be announced after the completion of repair work and agreement with the space test site.
The problem was discovered during inspections after static tests of the launch vehicle 8 June. Earlier, SpaceX's vice president of flight reliability, Bill Gerstenmeier, mentioned the leak, which was observed during the previous Starlink mission in April, but assured, that the company will have time to fix the problem before the planned launch. A fault was also detected in the thrust vectoring system of one of the engines, but, according to SpaceX representatives, this did not cause the mission to be postponed.
The Ax-4 mission has already experienced numerous delays. At first, the launch was planned for spring 2025 year, but it was delayed due to the replacement of Crew Dragon “Endurance”, which was used in NASA's Crew-10 mission. Additional technical preparations and weather conditions moved the launch date from the end of May to 10, and then to 11 June.
Despite the delay, NASA states, which has an Ax-4 launch window of late June, and, if necessary, in July, after the completion of operations with Russian cargo ships Progress. However, a significant further postponement could affect the launch schedule of NASA's next mission, Crew-11, which should also use this same Falcon booster 9.
They entered the Ax-4 crew: NASA veteran Peggy Witson (commander), which will make its fifth flight into space, Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla (pilot), as well as Sławosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary (mission specialists). All three will become the second representatives of their countries in orbit.
It is planned, that the mission will last for two weeks, during which the crew will spend approx 60 scientific experiments, including joint projects of NASA and the Indian space agency ISRO — a record number of studies for the Axiom missions.
We will remind, Axiom Space has already won all four previous NASA contracts for private flights to the ISS, but Vast announced its intention to compete for the next PAM-5 and PAM-6 missions, planned for 2026-2027.
Source: https://spacenews.com/booster-leak-delays-ax-4-private-astronaut-mission-to-iss/