SpaceX said it will fly two people to the moon next year, a feat not attempted since NASA’s Apollo heyday close to half a century ago.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk - the company’s founder - announced the surprising news.
Two people who know one another approached the company about sending them on a week long flight just beyond the moon, according to Musk. He won’t identify the pair or the price tag. They’ve already paid a “significant” deposit, he noted.
Musk said SpaceX is on track to launch astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA in mid-2018. This moon mission would follow about six months later, by the end of the year under the current schedule, using a Dragon crew capsule and a Falcon heavy rocket.
The moon mission is designed to be autonomous - unless something goes wrong, Musk said.
“I think they are entering this with their eyes open, knowing that there is some risk here,” Musk told reporters in a telephone news conference, a day after teasing via Twitter that an announcement of some sort was forthcoming.
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