SpaceX Will Finally Launch Space Tourists into Orbit Around Earth

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Space Adventures, a space tourism company, made an agreement to send four space tourists into the Earth orbit between late-2021 to mid-2022.

Four privately-paying customers will be brokered by Space Adventures, the company that had already brought several reach people to the International Space Station on a Russian spacecraft over the period 2001– 2009. The participants of the flight will need to undergo a few weeks of training before the launch; however, further details like the price of the mission remain unknown.

Gwynne Shotwell, The President and Chief Operating Officer at SpaceX, said in a statement: “This historic mission will forge a path to making spaceflight possible for all people who dream of it, and we are pleased to work with the Space Adventures’ team on the mission.”

The mission will last five days and will be launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The tourists will be flown in the Crew Dragon capsule, which is the very same capsule that SpaceX had been developing for NASA flights. The Crew Dragon rocket was destroyed by SpaceX on purpose back in January to test the emergency abort system and make sure that Elon Musk’s company would be able to fly Nasa astronauts to the International Space Station a few months later.

Space tourists will not be docked with the space station. Instead, they will orbit the Earth and then return.

“This will provide up to four individuals with the opportunity to break the world altitude record for private citizen spaceflight and see planet Earth the way no one has since the Gemini program,” Space Adventures also mentioned in a statement.