British singer Sarah Brightman is scheduled to go to the International Space Station in October, staying 10 days at the facility as a spaceflight participant. She will be riding aboard Russia's Soyuz capsule for a round trip that reportedly cost the singer $52 million.
If Brightman makes the trip, she will be the eighth space tourist to fly to the ISS. Guy Laliberte, Charles Simonyi, Richard Garriott, Anousheh Ansari, Greg Olsen, Mark Shuttleworth and Dennis Tito have gone before her. Simonyi is the only space tourist to have flown to the ISS twice. The last tourist flight was in 2009.
"Space Adventures has arranged all eight of the flights to space completed by private citizens to date. All of our clients have flown to the International Space Station on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and have lived and worked alongside professional astronauts for 10 days or more," explained the private company on its website.
Since the Space Shuttle program was reitred in 2011, the Soyuz capsules have become the primary mode of transportation for crew members headed to and from the ISS. Russia opened a seat in the Soyuz capsule this fall because it needs a fresh capsule for bringing home two crew members from the space station. A Soyuz can last six months in orbit; the ISS crew members are gearing up to make year-long stays at the space station.
The replacement Soyuz will be piloted by cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, who is also an incoming crew member at the ISS. He will be accompanied by Brightman and Andreas Mogensen, an astronaut from the European Space Agency.
Brightman arrived in Russia earlier in the week to start a nine-month training program that will get her ready for her trip to the ISS. Training was supposed to start Thursday Jan. 15, but was postponed to next week to give the singer time to recover from a cold.
If Brightman fails to make the flight, Satoshi Takamatsu, a Japanese entrepreneur, will be taking her place. To make sure Takamatsu is ready for the space flight as well, he will also be undergoing training at the Star City training center in Russia.
According to Space Adventures, just over 540 people have made it outside of Earth since manned spaceflight was invented. Brightman will be heading for the ISS aboard the Soyuz 42 and will be returning on the Soyuz 42 under the terms of a commercial agreement between Space Adventures and the Russian Federal Space Agency.
