NASA Will Open the International Space Station to Tourists Starting Next Year
Well, this is unexpected: Beginning in 2020-i.e. next year-NASA will begin letting tourists and other private astronauts visit the International Space Station (ISS), the agency announced today in a tweet:
.@Space_Station is open for commercial business! Watch @Astro_Christina talk about the steps we're taking to make our orbiting laboratory accessible to all Americans. pic.twitter.com/xLp2CpMC2x
- NASA (@NASA) June 7, 2019
Ever since the ISS was first launched into orbit in 1998 and some astronauts began calling it home in 2011, countries have toyed with opening the habitable artificial satellite up to tourists. Russia, for example, announced plans to build a luxury hotel on the ISS back in 2017 (it’ll cost you a cool $40 million for a one-week stay) and has already sent tourists to the satellite.
This is the first time, however, that NASA has officially welcomed tourists to the ISS; until now, the U.S. has restricted the ISS’s use to non-commercial purposes. But now we’re open for business-for movies, commercials, product testing, and the works, according to a press release.
“NASA is opening the International Space Station to commercial opportunities and marketing these opportunities as we’ve never done before,” said chief financial officer Jeff DeWit, via the BBC. Meanwhile, Robyn Gatens, deputy director of the ISS, said there will be one to two short private astronaut missions per year.
This is an updating post. We’ll include more information as we have it.
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