Ax-1 crew
The four private astronauts of Axiom Space’s Ax-1 mission, (from left) Mark Pathy, Larry Connor, Michael López-Alegría and Eytan Stibbe, are scheduled to launch April 6 on a Crew Dragon to the space station.

The first private mission to the International Space Station by an American vehicle is scheduled to launch this week to serve as a first step in one company’s plans to establish a commercial space station.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...