TRAVEL GEEKS
THE INFO REACH FOR THE STARS
PIONEERS ARE SETTING THEIR SIGHTS HIGH THIS YEAR, DESPITE THE RESTRICTIONS IN TERRESTRIAL TRAVEL. WELCOME TO THE NEXT FRONTIER IN TRAVEL, ONE THAT COULD LEAD TO SUB-ORBITAL TOURS AND TRIPS TO THE MOON WORDS: ANGELA LOCATELLI
IN NUMBERS take three: sky-high trips Virgin Galactic is working to deliver short up-and-down
trips to the edge of space — although it’s yet to announce a date for the first flight. Passengers will experience minutes of weightlessness like true astronauts.
virgingalactic.com
£42 million The approximate price of a 10-day trip to the International Space Station (ISS)
Timeline: the future of the ISS
2021
SpaceX and Axiom Space are planning
to send three tourists to the space station
for at least eight days, in what would be the
first-ever fully private human spaceflight mission to the ISS.
spacex.com
20 years
The period of continuous human presence on the ISS, marked on 2 November 2020
Spanish start-up
EOS-X Space plans to offer trips to the edge
of space by 2023, taking passengers 25 miles up
in pressurised, balloon- propelled capsules.
eosxspace.com
7
The number of tourists that have already travelled to space
HOW FAR AWAY IS...
Stars in their eyes Tom Cruise, NASA and SpaceX are
set to shoot a film in space. Russian
agency Roscosmos is backing a
similar project. The ISS
The space station orbits Earth at an average altitude of around 250 miles.
The Moon An average of
238,855 miles from Earth, although the distance is gradually growing.
Mars
It’s constantly changing, but the average distance between us and the red planet is 140 million miles.
SOURCES: BBC, BUSINESS INSIDER, CNN, NASA, THE NEW YORK TIMES, SKY NEWS,
SPACE.COM,
SPACENEWS.COM, THE VERGE SpaceX and Space
Adventures have inked an agreement to launch four tourists into orbit. The journey, set to last up to five days, could
happen as early as 2021.
spaceadventures.com
2024 Houston-based
Axiom Space has been selected by
NASA to build new habitable modules
that will be attached to a docking port on
the ISS. Construction is underway.
axiomspace.com 2028 It's likely the ISS will
be decommissioned, three decades aſter its launch.
The Axiom Space modules will be
detached and used
as building blocks for the manufacturer’s own private
space station.
138
nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel
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