SpaceX To Send Three Tourists To International Space Station In 2021

SpaceX has declared that as per a deal signed with Houston based start-up Axiom Space, the company is planning to send three people on a 10-day trip to the International Space Station. The trip is scheduled for the second quarter of 2021, SpaceX will use its Falcon 9 rocket and the all-new crew dragon capsule for the trip.

As per the deal, all the required logistics of the trip for the three private citizens will be managed by Axiom Space. Previously, seven citizens have been sent to the International Space Station, but it involved at least one governmental space agency. This is going to be the first completely private trip to ISS.

Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini said that this will be Axiom Space’s first mission to the International Space Station for a commercial organization. Axion Space refused to share any information like the cost of the entire mission.

As per the previous details, passengers gave almost ten million dollars for the previous trips to the ISS. However, the New York Times report says that the ticket will cost around $55 million and one of the three tickets is already sold.

This is the second biggest space tourism deal finalized by SpaceX in a month. Recently, SpaceX announced that it will work in collaboration with Space Adventures to arrange a trip orbiting the Earth for a limited number of travelers.

If this deal turns out to be successful, it will be for the first time that a US spacecraft will be used to take the travelers to the International Space Station.

Until now, Space Adventures has arranged eight trips to the International Space Station between 2001 to 2009. All the missions were executed with the help of Russian spacecraft Soyuz.