Washington, 19 January 2024 (dpa/MIA) - A third private mission set off for the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday with four Europeans on board, US space agency NASA said.

Spanish-born former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, Italian Walter Villadei, Swedish Marcus Wandt and Turkish Alper Gezeravci lifted off at 4:49 pm (2149 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Space Center in the US state of Florida aboard a Crew Dragon capsule from private space company SpaceX.

The capsule is expected to dock as early as 4:19 am, NASA said.

Gezeravci was the first Turkish citizen to fly into outer space.

The four private space travellers will stay on the ISS for about two weeks and carry out numerous experiments, NASA said.

The mission is organized by private space-flight company Axiom Space in cooperation with NASA and Tesla billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX.

According to media reports, the passengers paid about €50 million ($54.4 million) each for the trip.

Axiom has already successfully sent two private missions into space.

In April 2022, López-Alegría flew to the ISS with US entrepreneur Larry Connor, Israeli entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe and Canadian investor Mark Pathy. Axiom-1 was the first completely private mission to the space outpost.

In May 2023, former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, ex-racing driver John Shoffner and Saudi astronauts Ali Alqarni and Rayyanah Barnawi travelled to the ISS.

Individual space tourists had been on the space station several times before, but the Axiom missions were the first made up of completely private crews.

Founded in Houston, Texas, in 2016 by former NASA manager Michael Suffredini and Iranian-American businessman Kam Ghaffarian, Axiom Space sees itself as a future major player in the space market. It is planning its own commercial space station and has already been commissioned by NASA to build a commercial ISS module.

Photo: X