Couple buys two SpaceX tickets for week-long trip to the Moon aboard Starship

SpaceX has announced two new customers who will fly aboard the Starship in the mega rocket’s second commercial spaceflight to the Moon. The new customers are entrepreneur Dennis Tito and his wife Akiko Tito who would blast off to the lunar surface later this decade. 

This private mission will last for a week and the passengers aboard the Starship will get as close as 40 km to the Moon’s surface (no landing involved). While the exact timeline has not been specified, SpaceX says that the mission will be launched after the Polaris Program and the ‘dearMoon’ mission which was announced by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa in 2018. 

Notably, the couple is the first of ten more people (whose names are yet to be announced) who would embark on the lunar journey. What’s also interesting is that Tito was the first private astronaut who flew to the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz rocket on April 30, 2001. Currently 82, Tito was then one of the oldest space travellers and might become the oldest to visit space by the time he boards Starship. 

Former NASA astronaut John Glenn currently holds the record of being the oldest person to visit space during NASA's Space Shuttle era in 1998 when he was 77 years old. Star Trek actor William Shatner also launched in his maiden spaceflight aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard flight last October at the age of 90 but his was a sub-orbital flight that barely touched the edge of space-- the Karman Line.

'We both wanted to go': Akiko Tito

In an interview with Ars Technica, Dennis Tito said that the couple decided to book seats on Starship after visiting SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California. "We looked at each other, and we knew right away," Dennis Tito told Ars Technica. "I said yes, I want to go. We both wanted to go", his wife added. The couple, however, did not reveal the hefty amount they spent to book flights on SpaceX's biggest and most powerful rocket.

As mentioned above, the Tito couple would have to wait till the successful end of the Polaris Progam, which was announced earlier this year by billionaire Jared Isaacman. The Polaris Program also involves the crewed launch of Starship, which would be the rocket's first. Moreover, the 'dearMoon' mission will involve six to eight members for the launch which is targeted for 2023. Although the biggest hurdle is Starship's first orbital test flight which is being delayed since December last year.