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Man from Dayton to take part in historic space mission

DAYTON — A Miami Valley man is getting ready to take part in a historic space mission.

Larry Connor, a real estate and technology entrepreneur, is going to be the first-ever private mission astronaut to go onto the international space station — the Ax-1.

In a news conference Friday, Connor talked about the work he and his crew of three others will be doing.

“I think I speak for all of us, that we understand this first civilian mission is a big honor and a big opportunity, but with that comes a big responsibility, that is to execute the mission correctly and successfully,” Connor said.

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He will be joined by three other men on the journey.

“This is opening a new ear in the human space flight,” Michael Lopez-Algeria, mission commander of Ax-1 said.

Collectively Connor said the crew has spent more than 3,000 hours training.

The company Axiom is leading the mission.

While on the ISS the crew will conduct more than 25 different experiments.

Axiom said the experiments will help us understand technology for future spaceflight, as well as human physiology.

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“I have the good fortune to be working with both Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic, two experiments each, and they center around heart, aging, brain, and spine. So i’m really excited about that core group of experiments,” Connor said.

While Connor makes history, he will take a few pieces of history with him.

“I hope in some small measure to represent Ohio, and I am actually going to be taking from Neil Armstrong’s museum three different items as well as, I live in Dayton, Ohio the birthplace of Orville and Wilbur Wright, so I’ll actually be taking a piece of cloth from the wright’s 1903 Kittyhawk flyer,” he said.

The mission is set to lift off April 6.



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