A US outfit that organises tourist trips to the Space Station is to launch its own mission to the orbiting outpost in 2011. It is the first time a private company has paid for a rocket launch to rendezvous with the Station.
As if there isn't enough already going on in space. Nasa's Phoenix probe is digging around on Mars, while the agency's Glast gammay ray telescope blasted off today in search of new physics.
Now, Space Adventures, the outfit that arranged for Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth to fly into space, has announced it has paid the Russian Federal Space Agency to add an extra launch to its Soyuz flight schedule.
Planned for 2011, the flight to the International Space Station will have room for two paying space farers. One is expected to be Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google.
Company CEO Eric Richardson told reporters: "This is not space tourism. This is private exploration of space."
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