SpaceX is planning to send three tourists to the International Space Station (ISS) next year. The trip is part of a partnership with the Houston-based start-up Axiom Space.
Private citizens have flown to the ISS before, but they have all launched in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. This trip, which will use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule, will be the first launch of private citizens aboard a private spacecraft to the ISS.
The space tourists will spend two days traveling to and from the orbital space station and at least eight days on board, sharing space with the astronauts who work there. Tickets will cost around $55 million, and one seat is already booked, according to The New York Times. The trip was made possible after NASA announced last year that it would start opening up the ISS to more commercial activities like space tourism.
SpaceX has spent the last few years building a new version of its Dragon spacecraft that’s rated for human flight as part of a program to send NASA astronauts to the ISS. The private spaceflight company recently completed a second major flight test of this new version of Dragon where it demonstrated the ability to escape an exploding rocket. The first flight with NASA astronauts is expected to take place later this year.
SpaceX has made several announcements about space tourism in the past few years in 2017, the company announced plans to send tourists around the moon, and this February it announced a deal with another space flight startup to fly customers into orbit around Earth.
None of these flights have taken place yet. In fact, the Crew Dragon capsule, which SpaceX is developing to shuttle NASA astronauts to and from the ISS, has not yet flown with a crew. Its first crewed launch is currently scheduled for May 2020.
