Space Tourism

The latest private space mission has launched four astronauts into a sideways orbit that has never been attempted before with a crewed spacecraft. At 9:46 pm EDT, the Fram2 mission lifted off atop a Falcon 9 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

We're now one step closer to seeing tourists making balloon flights to the edge of outer space. Just last week, Florida company Space Perspective sent a balloon-lifted test capsule to the outer limits of our planet's atmosphere, followed by a successful splashdown landing.

Not content with sending tourists into space as a general destination, SpaceX plans by the end of the year to send a private space expedition, called Fram2, aboard a Dragon spacecraft on the first crewed mission to travel over the Earth's poles.

Paying passengers could be flying to the edge of space as soon as next year, but not with the company you might think. Spain's EOS-X Space has announced that it's nearing finalization of a capsule that will be hoisted heavenward by a giant balloon.

Thanks to Albert Einstein, the US Government wants to establish an official time zone for the Moon. It has less to do with jet lag and more to do with how gravity affects time and can throw a lot of very precise technologies seriously off track.

2023 turned out to be a busy year in space and the general vicinity. New Atlas looks back at everything from rocket launches and cosmic tsunamis to asteroid samples and the latest astronaut fashions.

When someone says they're planning on using a balloon to take tourists to the edge of space, you may wonder if they'll ever get past the conceptual stage. Space Perspective has gotten past it, by building a physical test model of its Neptune capsule.

After many years of delays, Virgin Galactic has carried its first tourist passengers to the edge of space, including British former Olympiad Jon Goodwin, and Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers, a mother and daughter from Antigua and Barbuda.

After years of setbacks, Virgin Galactic has completed its first commercial flight, which saw it carry 13 research payloads and three passengers from the Italian Air Force and National Research Council of Italy to the edge of space.

Space startup Vast has announced that it intends to launch what it calls the world's first commercial space station, Haven-1, sometime after August 2025 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as the first element of a 100-m (330 ft) rotating station.

Blue Origin and Sierra Space have revealed plans to place a commercially developed, owned, launched, and operated open-system architecture space station called Orbital Reef into low-Earth orbit between 2025 and 2030.

Lockheed Martin, Nanoracks, and Voyager Space have entered into a partnership to launch a permanently crewed commercial space station by 2027. Called Starlab, the semi-inflatable platform will be available to the US government and private industry.