In the second half of 2021, three tourists and a professional commander on board could arrive in a Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station thanks to a contract that SpaceX has signed with Axiom .
The mission will allow the crew to live aboard the orbital complex and experience at least eight days of microgravity.
A historic flight
This is the first of Axiom’s proposed "precursor missions" to the Space Station envisioned in its Space Law Agreement (SAA) with NASA. Axiom, which has not disclosed fare prices, plans to offer professional and private astronaut flights to the Station at a rate of up to two per year .
Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini has noted that:
This historic flight will represent a watershed moment in the march towards universal and routine access to space. This will be just the first of many missions to the Station to be fully manned and managed by Axiom Space, the first for a commercial entity. The transportation acquisition marks significant progress toward that goal, and we are pleased to be working with SpaceX on this effort.
These space tourists will not be the first, as several billionaires have traveled in the past. The first was the American Dennis Tito , who was in the ISS in 2001, after paying Russia about 20 million dollars.