https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67207375
Four UK astronauts could soon be heading into orbit on an all-British mission.
An American company that organises visits to the International Space Station (ISS) is developing the plan. Houston-based Axiom has signed a memorandum of understanding with the UK Space Agency to try to make it happen. The project would probably cost £200m or more, but the idea is that it would be funded commercially. There would be no contribution from UK taxpayers.
Axiom told the BBC that conversations with corporations and institutions interested in providing finance were already under way. The last UK individual to go into orbit was Tim Peake, who flew to the ISS as a European Space Agency (Esa) astronaut in 2015. "This is an exciting opportunity and actually unique," he commented. "No-one has done a 'national mission', commercially, like this before. It's a new model and would be paving the way for how we do space in the future."
Details are sparse at the moment. No crew has been chosen, nor is there a concept yet for how it would be selected. And neither has the destination been fixed. Currently, all Axiom-organised missions have used capsules belonging to entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX company to take participating astronauts to the ISS. But the British mission could also be a free-flyer. That's to say, the crew would spend a number of days circling the Earth in just their capsule, conducting scientific experiments and performing outreach, before then returning to a splashdown on Earth.
Axiom, which was founded by a former Nasa official in charge of the ISS, has so far operated two missions, with a third set to blast off in the New Year. These early ventures have provided flight opportunities for high-net-worth individuals and for government-funded astronauts who are not part of the station's regular crew rotations. But if the new space economy in low-Earth orbit is to develop sustainably, it has to move beyond just billionaires and government funds. It has to pull in sectors that traditionally have not been involved in space activity.