Dennis Tito, the first space tourist to fund his own trip into space, has booked another trip with Elon Musk's SpaceX for a mission around the moon.
"Dennis and Akiko Tito are the first two crewmembers on Starship's second commercial spaceflight around the Moon," SpaceX tweeted on Wednesday.
According to SpaceX, Tito and his wife, Akiko will take the second lunar expedition on Starship that will last roughly a week.
Meanwhile, the mission will only follow after SpaceX's commitment to launch Jared Isaacman on the first commercial human spaceflight mission on Starship. SpaceX will also carry out its first trip around the moon for billionaire fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa.
In April 28, 2001, Tito, an American engineer and entrepreneur, made history after he became the first space tourist to go into space. The spacecraft docked with the International Space Station. Tito and his fellow cosmonauts spent 7 days, 22 hours, 4 minutes in space and orbited the Earth 128 times. Tito had reportedly paid $20 million for his trip.
In an interview with "CBS Mornings," Tito said he and his wife of two years want to fly on Musk's futuristic Starship for the sheer adventure of it.
"I've been thinking about flying to the moon for the last 20 years, since my space flight," Tito said. "And here we were at SpaceX (recently) and they were interested in talking about a space flight. And I brought it up. And within a few minutes, we both were on board."
For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com
Business News
May 01, 2026 15:54 ET Central banks dominated the economics news flow this week with almost all major ones announcing their latest policy decisions and many boosted expectations for a rate hike in June. In other news, several countries released the preliminary data for first quarter economic growth. In the U.S., comments by Fed Chair Jerome Powell were also in focus as his term ends this month.