Flight suit worn on 1st all-private astronaut mission to ISS debuts on display

A smiling older man in a blue jacket stands next to a blue flight suit inside an air and space museum.

When Michael Lopez-Alegria commanded the first privately funded crewed mission to visit the International Space Station, he traded his NASA "blues" for a "Deep Space" and "Mesosphere" flight suit.

Two years later, the public can get an up-close look at those new hues for human spaceflight while touring NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. Lopez-Alegria's Axiom Space Ax-1 suit went on display on Thursday (Nov. 21) alongside the retired space shuttle Atlantis.

"Ironically, that is the only orbiter I did not fly on," said Lopez-Alegria in an interview with collectSPACE.com. "So I've never been in Atlantis in space, but I've been in it on the ground quite a bit when I was an astronaut support person, checking out its switch configuration and things like that before [other crews'] launched."

Michael Lopez-Alegria seen wearing his Axiom Space flight suit inside the Cupola aboard the International Space Station during Axiom Mission-1 (Ax-1) in April 2022. (Image credit: NASA)