Meet the Canadian blasting off as part of the first civilian mission to the International Space Station

Mark Pathy isn't the type for being in the spotlight but, being part of the historic first civilian mission to the space station, he hasn't had much choice.

"If I could have done this in complete anonymity, I definitely would have," he said. "But, obviously, that's not possible."

Pathy, a 52-year-old entrepreneur and philanthropist from Montreal, spoke from his brightly lit hotel quarantine room outside Orlando, Fla., while awaiting his launch. It had already been moved twice from its original date of March 30.

But the time has finally come. If everything goes right, Pathy will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket destined for the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday at 11:17 a.m. ET.

"I've had this fantasy since I was a kid and watched Star Trek," he said over Zoom. "I had a fantasy of travelling through space and bouncing around the universe and meeting new species and discovering new worlds ... all that kind of stuff."

Pathy isn't exactly heading off to meet crinkly foreheaded aliens, but he's not on a pleasure cruise to the ISS either. Instead, he's part of a four-person crew that includes former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, entrepreneur Larry Connor and investor Eytan Stibbe — the first civilian mission to the space station, and they will be hard at work.

The four are part of Axiom Space's Ax-1 mission. Axiom is a privately funded space company that is aiming to send commercial missions to the ISS — Ax-1 is their first — and eventually build the world's first commercial space station.

It may seem like a fantastical and unnecessary goal to set up a space station, but the company's aim, it said, is to conduct research and experiments that can be used not only in space but also here on Earth.

And that was part of the appeal for Pathy to buy a $50-million seat.

"When I found out that we were able to select research to bring up with us and complete up there, that was just the icing on the cake — that I could really make this a lot more impactful."

But how do you tell your wife and two kids that you're about to strap into a rocket, undergo a controlled explosion and head into a place where no human was meant to live or work?

"I came home and said to my wife, 'I think I'm going to space.' And her first response was, 'Not without me you're not,'" he said. "But she's excited for me and my kids were really excited … My parents were skeptical, initially, but they've become big supporters. And they're really excited about this whole thing."

Pathy knows there are risks.

"I have a young family, so I'm not sort of thinking, 'Wow, well, you know, I've had a good life, but what the hell.'