Q&A: Axiom’s Peggy Whitson on space station assembly

AIAA SCITECH FORUM, ORLANDO, Fla. — If Axiom Space’s plans hold, its commercial space station will be in low-Earth orbit in 2028.

The Texas company is one of a handful of developers aiming to establish privately owned stations by the time the International Space Station is decommissioned in 2030. Plans call for the initial Axiom Station to be comprised of two modules, the PPTM — short for Payload Power Thermal Module — and a habitat module. The PPTM, which is to be shipped shortly to Houston for final assembly and integration, is slated to be launched in early 2028, with the second module following just months later. From there, Axiom aims to swiftly begin welcoming crew, Peggy Whitson, the company’s vice president of human spaceflight, told me in an interview.

“We plan to have human presence once we have that four-person crew capability,” she said, referring to the capacity of the habitat module. Plans call for the station to eventually comprise five modules and support up to eight crew members. “We will have permanent human presence in space to be able to continue and overlap with ISS, which is the most important part.”

In the meantime, the company hopes to receive NASA approval to conduct two more private flights to ISS, proposals for which were due last year, and is continuing development of the lunar surface suits required for the Artemis III landing, now scheduled for 2028.

I spoke to Whitson about the milestones ahead for Axiom Station and the Artemis suits.

Q: Let’s start with the early years of Axiom Station. How do you envision those playing out?

A: The initial proposal we had submitted to NASA was that we would have built the whole station [before detaching from ISS], but NASA recognized that they need to do some studies about how to orbit the vehicle, and so they need us actually off the vehicle relatively early.

So we reorganized our assembly sequence and moved up the first module, which has power and thermal and some scientific racks inside of it. It’ll berth to the station, and we will be taking up some cargo and transfer that to the ISS, and then fill the rack space with the scientific racks that NASA or other countries want to transfer to the next station. Some of those racks are very complex, some of them are used a lot, and we don’t want to lose that capability. There are definitely a lot of very special things about having a vehicle up there for 25 years, and we’ve learned a lot from ISS.

Q: What are some things Axiom plans to do the same as ISS, and what are a few  that will be different?

A: We want to have the same level of reliability and competence. We need to have high-level, high-quality training and high-quality operations on orbit. We want to keep all those things for sure.

We want to try and streamline it and make it as simple as possible, so it’s easy to change things up and do things a little bit differently and include innovations. So as the engineers are designing the racks and the volumes, as much as possible we need to build in the ability to adapt when we find that new technology in four years that enables something dramatically new.

Having some of the legacy hardware is also important because it gets used all the time. So we’re trying to fold them both together and enable both, which allows us to keep customers that are already working in space and also evolve for new customers to their needs.

Q: What are the most pressing demands or needs from customers, based on the private missions to ISS that Axiom has conducted so far?

A: We found a lot of governments that are so excited to take advantage of our ability to get them access to space, so that those governments don’t have to build a whole infrastructure. Everybody wants to get on the leading edge of technology, and space is one way to do that.

We’ve also partnered with some interesting new industries, new researchers that have not had access to ISS before. The cancer research is one that we’re just so excited about. To have a drug and trials that can kill Triple-Negative Breast Cancer — it’s huge.

The Cancer in LEO-3 experiment conducted last year aboard ISS during the Axiom-4 mission assessed how this particular form of cancer responded to an experimental drug. — CH

Q: What are the big milestones this year for the PPTM module?

A: All these modules have different thrusters so the thruster team has been working for years, and they’ve successfully demonstrated that. They’ve already, this year, integrated it with the software systems. So the software systems that would be used on orbit are now firing thrusters out in our backyard at a pulse rate controlled by the computer systems.

We’ve got new batteries that we’re developing in-house, and they’re going through different phases of testing. The life support systems, all of this is being worked on, and it’s really exciting to see all the action.

Q: Now that Jared Isaacman has been confirmed as NASA administrator, what guidance are you looking for about the path forward for the commercial stations?

A: I think it’ll be great working with Jared. He’s got operational experience in space.

Isaacman has completed two free-flyer missions in low-Earth orbit aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules. — CH

But also, he comes from industry and he knows what innovation can do, and he knows how powerful that can be as entities develop.

And so I think Jared will be looking to use commercial space in maybe new ways, which is exciting. NASA has been moving toward that for years anyway. We’re looking forward to NASA announcing the winners of the RFP for the next private astronaut missions [to ISS] and what the next Commercial LEO Destinations contract is going to include.

Q: Shifting gears to spacesuit development, what’s next for that program to be ready a 2028 lunar landing?

A: We’re doing really well and on schedule for everything. I did some trial runs looking at the SpaceX lander system and how our suit interfaces there, and some of the initial EVAs [extravehicular activities, more commonly called spacewalks] that are planned to be done on the lunar surface and looking at tools and hardware and how the suit works and all that.

It is exciting and fun to think that our suits are going to be on the lunar surface and at a place on the moon we’ve never gone before.