SpaceX Announces a Second Private Flight To the Moon Aboard Starship
Entrepreneur Dennis Tito and his wife, Akiko Tito, announced Wednesday that they purchased two tickets on the second of SpaceX's planned circumlunar flights later this decade. Dennis Tito made history when he became the first person to pay for his own ride into space more than two decades ago. He flew aboard a Soyuz vehicle and spent a week on the International Space Station. As for his wife, Akiko Tito, she becomes the first woman confirmed to fly on Starship, notes Ars Technica. From the report: The flight will last about a week, outbound to the Moon, passing within about 40 km of the surface and flying back. Ten other seats on Starship remain unsold and are available. Tito said he was not at liberty to disclose the price he paid. This brings the manifest of private human spaceflights on Starship, and its Super Heavy rocket, to three. There is billionaire Jared Isaacman's Polaris III mission, likely to low Earth orbit, which will be followed by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa's "dearMoon" flight, the first human Starship flight around the Moon. Then comes Tito and the second circumlunar mission. SpaceX has also contracted with NASA to fly the first human landing on the Moon as part of the Artemis program, but for now, NASA astronauts will launch on a separate rocket and rendezvous with Starship in lunar orbit to go down to the lunar surface and back to orbit. So far, NASA hasn't announced plans to launch astronauts from Earth on Starship or land them back here. The timeline for all of these missions hinges on the development of the Starship vehicle, which may make a debut orbital test flight in the coming months from South Texas. After that, the large, fully reusable launch system will fly dozens of uncrewed missions, mostly carrying Starlink payloads, before humans climb on board. This is because Starship will make a propulsive landing back on Earth -- something no crew vehicle has ever done -- and has no backup should there be some sort of landing failure.
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