NEW YORK, February 1. /TASS/. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Axiom Space plan to send the fifth commercial mission to the International Space Station (ISS) next January.

"NASA and Axiom Space have signed an order for the fifth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, targeted to launch no earlier than January 2027 from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida," NASA said.

The Axiom-5 mission crew is expected to include four people who will spend about 14 days aboard the orbital station.

In the summer of 2025, the crew of the fourth commercial mission, Axiom-4, spent about 18 days on the ISS. The crew included former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu, Polish astronaut Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, and Indian Air Force test pilot Shubhanshu Shukla. The first mission to deliver a fully commercial crew to the ISS was carried out by NASA and Axiom Space in April 2022.