SpaceX, a company of the US billionaire Elon Musk, said that the world’s first space tourist _ Dennis Tito and his wife Akiko will be flying around the moon on the space exploration firm’s Starship rocket.
The SpaceX flight’s roughly week-long journey will see the rocket travel within 200 kilometers of the moon without landing on its surface.
According to SpaceX, the engineer turned financial analyst Tito, 82, was the first private individual to pay for a trip to space on Russia’s Soyuz TM-32 mission in 2001. He spent eight days aboard the International Space Station.
Tito and his wife are the first crewmembers to be announced for Starship’s second commercial spaceflight around the moon.
SpaceX, so far, did not announce a date for the launch of Starship, the focus of Tesla CEO Musk’s ambition to ferry humans and cargo to the moon and Mars. However, the world’s richest person has said he aims to send the rocket to orbit for the first time in November this year.
SpaceX and Richard Branson-founded Virgin Galactic are striving to make space travel a reality, while Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin currently offers sub-orbital joyrides that hit an altitude of about 350,000 feet (106 km).
