When NASA veteran Michael Suffredini retired after a decade managing the International Space Station program, he did not walk away from orbit. He called Kam Ghaffarian, a Houston engineer who had already built and sold NASA's second-largest engineering contractor, and they decided to build the next space station themselves. That conversation, in 2016, became Axiom Space . Eight years later, Axiom has flown four private crews to the ISS aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules, secured a NASA contract to outfit astronauts for the lunar south pole, put steel in the ground on two station modules being fabricated in Turin, and closed $1.12 billion in total financing to get it all across the finish line. No other private company is further along the path toward a working commercial space station. Axiom Station modules will attach to the ISS before eventually detaching as a free-flying platform. Credit: Axiom Space Two Careers, One Company Axiom Space was incorporated in Houston in 2016, but the intellectual groundwork was laid over two careers that ran parallel inside the NASA ecosystem for decades. Kam Ghaffarian arrived in the United States from Iran at 17, earned degrees in engineering and computer science, and eventually a PhD in management information systems. He co-founded Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies (SGT) in 1994, growing it into a major NASA contractor that handled ISS operations support, astronaut training, and mission-critical engineering. KBR acquired SGT in 2018 for $355 million. Ghaffarian had already moved on: he co-founded X-energy (nuclear energy, 2009), Intuitive Machines (lunar delivery, 2013), and Quantum Space (cislunar satellites, 2020) before Axiom was incorporated. He serves today as Executive Chairman. Michael Suffredini spent 30 years at NASA, including a decade as ISS Program Manager from 2005 to 2015, longer than anyone else in that role. He oversaw the station's assembly completion, the transition from Shuttle to commercial crew, and the shift toward commercial utilization of on-orbit facilities. When he retired, he understood better than almost anyone alive what it would take to build and operate a station, and what NASA would need from a private successor. He served as Axiom's first CEO and President. In October 2025, Dr. Jonathan W. Cirtain was appointed CEO and President, taking the company into its station-hardware delivery phase. Suffredini remains affiliated with the company he co-founded. Company at a Glance Axiom Space is a private space infrastructure company headquartered in Houston, Texas , near NASA's Johnson Space Center. Its stated mission is to foster a thriving and equitable cislunar economy by developing a permanent, commercially operated successor to the ISS. 2016 Year Founded $1.12B Total Capital Raised 4 Private Crew Missions Flown ~800 Employees $228.5M NASA Spacesuit Contract (initial) 2028 Target Free-Flight Operations Four Missions to the Station Before Axiom can operate its own station, it needed to prove it could operate crewed missions. The company did that four times between 2022 and 2025, sending private astronauts to the ISS aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules under agreements with NASA. Each flight added operational experience, international partnerships, and scientific payload capacity that purely government-run programs could not have assembled as quickly. The missions were not joyrides. Crews conducted dozens of experiments across human health, biology, materials science, and technology demonstration. They worked alongside ISS Expedition crews and operated under the same safety and mission protocols as NASA's own astronauts. Axiom managed the mission on the commercial side, selling seats to government space agencies and private individuals, while SpaceX provided the launch vehicle and capsule. Mission Launch Date Duration Commander Notable Crew / First Ax-1 Apr 8, 2022 17 days Michael López-Alegría First all-private crewed ISS mission Ax-2 May 21, 2023 9 days Peggy Whitson First Saudi woman in space (Rayyanah Barnawi) Ax-3 Jan 18, 2024 22 days Michael López-Alegría First Turkish astronaut in space (Alper Gezeravcı) Ax-4 Jun 25, 2025 20 days Peggy Whitson First govt-sponsored human spaceflight for India, Poland, and Hungary in 40+ years Axiom Mission 4, launched June 25, 2025, aboard Crew Dragon Grace , carried an international crew representing four nations. Indian Air Force Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla flew on behalf of ISRO, Poland's Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski represented the European Space Agency, and Hungary's Tibor Kapu flew under a partnership involving 4iG, the Hungarian technology firm that has also invested in Axiom. The crew spent 18 days docked to the ISS's Harmony module before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego on July 15, 2025, completing 288 orbits and covering roughly 7.6 million miles. The SpaceX Partnership • Launch Vehicle: SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 for all four missions. • Spacecraft: Crew Dragon capsules — Endeavour (Ax-1), Freedom (Ax-2, Ax-3), and Grace (Ax-4). • Scope: Axiom holds a multi-mission contract with SpaceX covering at least four crewed flights to the ISS. • Role Division: SpaceX provides launch and capsule; Axiom handles mission planning, crew training, science payloads, and customer relationships. Dressing the Moon: The AxEMU Spacesuit NASA's Apollo-era spacesuits were engineered for a moon that engineers had never walked on. The agency's xEMU program, launched to develop a replacement for the aging Extravehicular Mobility Units used on the ISS, eventually became something larger: the contract to suit up astronauts for Artemis III, the first crewed lunar south pole landing. In June 2022, NASA awarded Axiom Space the Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS) contract to design and build those suits. A formal task order issued September 7, 2022, was valued at $228.5 million , part of a broader 10-year ordering vehicle with a ceiling that sources have cited at up to $3.5 billion across providers. A second task order followed in July 2023, worth up to $142 million, to adapt the AxEMU design for ISS microgravity spacewalks. The Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) was publicly debuted on March 15, 2023, at NASA's Johnson Space Center. The design borrows from NASA's xEMU development work, then extends it substantially. Key capabilities include enhanced knee flexion that allows astronauts to kneel on the lunar surface (something impossible in Apollo suits), resistance to lunar regolith dust intrusion, eight-hour EVA endurance, and integrated HD cameras and lighting for surface documentation. The suit is rated for the extreme cold of the lunar south pole, where temperatures can drop to -280 degrees Fahrenheit in permanently shadowed craters. Prada, the Italian fashion house, joined the program in October 2024 as a materials and design collaborator. The partnership brought Prada's expertise in high-performance textiles and precision manufacturing to the suit's outer layer and human interface elements. The result is a design that Axiom describes as offering mobility never seen before in an EVA suit, built on the legacy of 60 years of American spacesuit engineering. AxEMU Development Status (Early 2026) By early 2026, the AxEMU program had logged over 700 crewed pressurized hours in testing, completed its first dual-suit run at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, and passed uncrewed thermal vacuum testing in November 2025. A NASA-led Critical Design Review is pending, with a flight test targeted for 2027, either at the ISS or in support of Artemis III. Axiom Station: Steel in the Ground The central ambition that drove Axiom's founding is a modular, free-flying commercial space station to succeed the ISS, which NASA plans to deorbit around 2030. The strategy is to build and launch modules that first attach to the ISS, operate there while the station remains active, then detach as a self-sustaining platform when the ISS comes down. In January 2020, N