Biography|Michael Suffredini — The Pad Where His Company Sent the First Private Crew to Station

At 11:17 a.m. Eastern on 8 April 2022 a Falcon 9 left Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center.

In the Dragon Endeavour were Michael López-Alegría, Larry Connor, Mark Pathy and Eytan Stibbe.

The flight was Axiom Mission 1, the first all-private crewed mission to the International Space Station.

NASA, SpaceX and Axiom all logged that time.

Suffredini was then president and chief executive of the company that bought the seats and ran the mission.

He had spent 2005 to 2015 as NASA's ISS program manager.

The pad in front of the visitor is the same concrete that sent Apollo 11 and the first shuttle.

On this morning it sent a commercial crew under a NASA contract to visit a station he used to run.

Endeavour docked on 9 April.

The crew spent about two weeks aboard before splashdown off Florida on 25 April.

The mission was the first proof that the company founded on Gemini Street could put people on the laboratory.

Later Axiom flights followed the same pad and the same station.

Suffredini stepped down as chief executive on 9 August 2024 and stayed on the board.

The launch is the public moment.

The program office in Houston was the work.

Photo: NASA, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Axiom Mission 1 launch from LC-39A)