The first space tourist in history said on Wednesday he intended to participate with his wife in a future mission around the Moon organised by the American company SpaceX.
Dennis Tito, an American entrepreneur who, in 2001, became the first Earthling to pay for space travel, told reporters that what drove him to renew the experience was his passion for space and the possibilities it offers to humanity.
The one-week mission to which Dennis Tito and his wife Akiko could participate, entails a flight 200 km from the surface of the Moon before returning to Earth.
It will take place when Elon Musk has completed the prototype of his Starship spacecraft and carried out an already planned first commercial flight with Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa.
Of the 12 seats available, the Tito couple booked two, unlike Yusaku Maezawa who booked the entire flight organised by SpaceX.
Dennis Tito, 82, did not specify the amount paid to make the trip with Akiko but, in 2001, he had paid $20 million to fly aboard a Russian rocket to the International Space Station (ISS ), ushering in the era of space tourism.
SpaceX has yet to announce when it will begin commercial space missions aboard Starship — a rocket that Elon Musk says he wants to use to one day take humans to Mars.
NASA, for its part, has chosen to bank on Starship to become the lander used as part of its Artemis programme to return to the Moon.
