SPACEX SAYS IT WILL LAUNCH SPACE TOURISTS AS SOON AS NEXT YEAR

SpaceX announced a partnership this week with space tourism Space Adventures to start launching passengers to orbit aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft starting as early as 2021, TechCrunch reports.

SpaceX says it will send four privately-paying space tourists to orbit the Earth for five days in its Crew Dragon capsule between “late-2021 and mid-2022,” according to CNBC.

“This historic mission will forge a path to making spaceflight possible for all people who dream of it, and we are pleased to work with the Space Adventures’ team on the mission,” SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement.

Space Adventures already sells seats on Russian Soyuz rockets.

SpaceX’s passenger-carrying Crew Dragon capsule, developed as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, has so far completed a successful test trip and docking maneur  to the International Space Station last year, but has yet to make the journey with any passengers on board.

Earlier this year, SpaceX tested its space taxi’s emergency abort system in dramatic fashion, intentionally blowing up a Falcon 9 rocket in the process.

READ MORE: SpaceX and new partner announce space tourism launches on Dragon starting as early as 2021 [TechCrunch]