Crew of First Fully Private Flight to ISS Head Back to Earth

The crew of the first completely private mission to the International Space Station left the orbiting lab to return to Earth on Monday. Three businessmen and a former NASA astronaut spent more than two weeks at the station to make the history of a mission hosted by startup Axiom Space.

The four men, three of whom paid millions on the rare occasion of participating in the mission, initially planned to spend just eight days on the space station.

U.S. citizen Larry Connor, Canadian businessman Mark Pathy, and former Israeli fighter pilot and entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe along with former astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria took off from Florida on April 8 and arrive at the ISS the next day.

After boarding, the men conducted a number of experiments with Earth-bound research centers, along with cardiac health and cognitive performance in low gravity, according to a NASA blog.

The mission was dubbed Ax-1 in a nod to Axiom Space, the company which served as a space travel agency, which paid SpaceX for providing two-way transportation and NASA for the use of the orbiting accommodations.