SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, announced Wednesday that the world’s first space tourist, Dennis Tito, and his wife Akiko have signed up to fly around the Moon on the space exploration company’s Starship rocket.
Tito, 82, an engineer turned financial analyst, was the first private person to pay for a trip into space on Russia’s Soyuz TM-32 mission in 2001, when he spent nearly eight days aboard the International Space Station.
The SpaceX flight’s approximately week-long journey will see the rocket travel 200 kilometers from the Moon without landing on its surface.
Tito and his wife are the first crew members to be announced for Starship’s second commercial spaceflight around the Moon.
SpaceX has not announced a launch date for the Starship, the focus of Musk’s ambition to transport humans and cargo to the Moon and Mars. However, the world’s richest man has said he intends to put the rocket into orbit for the first time as early as next month.
A handful of companies, including SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, founded by Richard Branson, are striving to make space travel a reality, while Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin currently offers suborbital tours that reach an altitude of around 106 feet. kilometers.
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