By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) – A SpaceX rocketship carrying four astronauts was scheduled to liftoff Friday. This will be the first private launch of an all-private team to reach the International Space Station (ISS), a significant milestone in space commercialization.

At 11:17 am EDT (1517 GMT), the four astronauts selected by Houston-based startup Axiom Space Inc were to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

If everything goes according to plan, Michael Lopez-Alegria and his retired NASA astronaut crew would reach the space station Saturday when their Crew Dragon-supplied SpaceX capsule docks at orbiting post approximately 250 miles (400km) above Earth.

SpaceX is a privately-funded rocket company founded by billionaire Elon Musk. It provides Falcon 9 to launch the Crew Dragon into space, and also directs the mission control from its Los Angeles headquarters.

NASA is responsible for furnishing the launch pad and eight days of biomedical research once the astronauts board.

All three parties hailed the mission as an important step in expanding commercial space ventures. It is part of a joint partnership between Axiom and SpaceX.

The space station has had civilian visitors in the past, but the Ax-1 mission is the first time that an all-commercial crew of astronauts will use ISS to fulfill its original purpose of being an orbiting laboratory.

These astronauts will work together in a weightless working environment alongside seven crew members on the ISS – three Americans, a German astronaut and three Russian cosmonauts.

Lopez-Alegria (63), is a Spanish-born mission commander. He also serves as Axiom’s vice president for business development. Larry Connor from Ohio, a technology entrepreneur and an aerobatics aviator is expected to join him. Connor is currently in his 70s. However, the company didn’t provide any details about his age.

Rounding out the Ax-1 team are investor-philanthropist and former Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe, 64, and Canadian businessman and philanthropist Mark Pathy, 52, both serving as mission specialists. Stibbe will be the second Israeli astronaut after Ilan Ramon who died with six of his NASA colleagues in 2003’s Columbia spacecraft disaster.

Axiom crew members might seem to share a lot with wealthy passengers who have been taking suborbital rides on the Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic services provided by billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, respectively. Axiom executive said, however that the mission of their company goes beyond space tourism.

They’re not there to stick their noses in the windows. “They’re there to do meaningful work, each in their way,” Michael Suffredini (Axiom CEO and co-founder) said at a recent news briefing.

Suffredini stated that Axiom’s astronaut team had undergone intensive training from both NASA and SpaceX.

Company executives stated that the Ax-1 team would be performing more than twenty science experiments on ISS. These include research into brain health and cancer, as well as a demonstration of technology to make optics by using surface tension in fluids in microgravity.

The space station was launched to orbit in 1998. Since then, it has been continuously occupied by a U.S. and Russian-led partnership that includes Canada, Japan, 11 European countries, as well as Canada.

NASA does not plan to invest in a space station after the ISS has been retired. This will be around 2030. NASA picked Axiom for their 2020 mission to create and maintain a new orbiting laboratory commercial wing. The current wing is approximately the same size as a football field.

When the station is decommissioned, plans call for the Axiom module to be detached from the rest. Private operators may also place stations into orbit when ISS stops being in service.

Axiom announced that it had signed a contract with SpaceX for three additional private missions by astronauts to the station in the interim.