Around the Moon next year ?

The private space agency of the US, SpaceX plans to launch two paying passengers on a tourist trip around the moon next year using a spaceship under development for NASA astronauts and a heavy-lift rocket yet to be flown, the launch company announced.

The launch of the first privately funded tourist flight beyond the orbit of the International Space Station is tentatively targeted for late 2018, Space Exploration Technologies Chief Executive Elon Musk told reporters on a conference call.

SpaceX CEO Alan Musk said, "We are pleased to inform that the two private citizens contacted us to fly (to the moon). This mission will be sent by the end of next year."

- “A human will have the opportunity to return into deep space after 45 years. They will travel further and faster than ever before in the solar system." Mask said, “Those who are going to the moon have already made some of the payment.” Musk declined to identify the customers or say how much they would pay to fly on the weeklong mission, except to say that it is “nobody from Hollywood.” However,  Tourists’ training and health test will start by the end of this year.

“I think there’s a market for one or two of these per year,” he said, estimating that space tourist fares charged by SpaceX could eventually contribute 10 to 20 percent of the company’s revenue.

Plans call for SpaceX’s two-person lunar venture to fly some 300,000 to 400,000 miles (480,000 to 640,000 km) from Earth past the moon before Earth’s gravity pulls the spacecraft back into the atmosphere for a parachute landing.

That trajectory would be similar to NASA’s 1968 Apollo 8 mission beyond the moon and back.