While private visitors to the Space Station aren’t new, with a handful having launched to orbit aboard Soyuz rockets, this will be the first time a group on a private rocket will be launched. The cost of each trip is about $71 million Australian and involved fifteen weeks of training and a barrage of medical examinations to prove they were fit to fly.
The mission will be led by experienced former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and will mark the first time since 2009 that tourists have visited the International Space Station. The crew are Larry Connor, a real estate and tech entrepreneur from Dayton, Ohio, Canadian financier Mark Pathy and Israeli businessman and close friend of Ilan Ramon, who was killed in the 2003 Columbia accident, Eytan Stibbe.
