"The first spacecraft of the world, Yuri Gagarin," will soon be able to fly the space tourists, once bypassing the Earth, said Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian Space Agency, CEO of Rosmosmos in his Twitter entry.
Rogozin did not provide further details about the project, only to say that the shortness of flight makes it possible to shorten the preparation of occasional astronauts.
The official also announced that the Roshosmos had signed a contract with a US Space Adventures firm to return two non-professional spacecraft to the International Space Station by the end of 2021, where a decade ago had not been a spaceist. The two paying cosmonauts will be released in the same spaceship.
All seven payers of the space station so far have been released on the Soyuz spacecraft with the help of the Rosmosmos and Space Adventures.
According to Rosposmos, space tourism can generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue a year. In January, Rogozin stated in his economic newspaper RBK that after 2020 Russia could boost the production of Soyuz spacecraft for paying astronauts.
On April 12, 1961, Gagarin escaped the Earth with his Vostok-1 spacecraft. Since then, Space Adventures has announced that slightly more than 550 people have ever been in space.
(Source: marmalade.co.uk; MTI | Picture: pixabay.com)