Space Tourism

Virgin Galactic has wheeled out the next-generation version of the vehicle designed to carry human tourists into space, showing off a shimmering, mirror-like spaceship named the VSS Imagine that features a modular design.

California's Orbital Assembly Corporation reckons it will soon have the solar system's first luxury space hotel open in orbit, offering spacewalks, Beyonce concerts and fine dining to space tourists at prices near US$5 million per three and a half days.

Virgin Galactic is looking to shrug off a failed flight in mid-December, with plans for another attempt to reach space using its SpaceShipTwo spacecraft in around a fortnight’s time as it pursues its vision of carrying private passengers into space.

After last year carrying astronauts into space as part of a regular crewed flight program for NASA, SpaceX is now looking to extend this experience to everyday people, outlining plans for the world’s first all-civilian space mission.

A year after it was selected to supply the first private module for the International Space Station, Axiom Space has announced that it has selected the crew for the first-ever all private crewed orbital space mission.

Virgin Galactic has hit a small speed bump as it continues testing of its spaceplane at its Spaceport America base in New Mexico, with the latest outing for SpaceShipTwo Unity brought to a premature end due to rocket failure.

A serious-looking consortium of businesses is trying to position Japan as the first Asian space tourism hub, by proposing a futuristic, floating "Spaceport Japan" from which services like Virgin Galactic can operate their sub-orbital joyrides.

RSC Energia and Space Adventures, Inc plan to fly two tourists to the Russian section of the International Space Station in 2023, with one of them embarking on a space walk with a cosmonaut during the short visit.

In recent years, people have used balloons to carry items ranging from teddy bears to chicken sandwiches to the edge of outer space. Now, Florida-based startup Space Perspective has announced plans to do the same thing with paying human passengers.

Virgin Galactic is further expanding its scope of space-faring services, today signing a new agreement with NASA that will see it prepare private astronauts for trips to the International Space Station.

Space Adventures has announced that it has signed an agreement with SpaceX to fly paying passengers aboard the aerospace company's Crew Dragon spacecraft, which will mark the first time that space tourists will be launched aboard an American rocket.

Virgin Galactic has become the first passenger-carrying spaceflight company to be publicly traded. Shares of new Virgin Galactic Holdings company were bought and sold on the New York Stock exchange on October 28, 2019, under the stock ticker SPCE.