How SpaceX plans to fly people around the moon next year

CEO Elon Musk announced that SpaceX will send two private paying customers around the moon next year. The flight would mark the first human return to deep space in almost 50 years. Musk stated that the two individuals would fly a week-long mission in a “long loop” around the moon, to approximately 400,000 miles from Earth, and then return home.

The mission will be a private one, not involving NASA astronauts, with two citizens who approached the company. According to Musk, the passengers are “very serious” about the mission and have already paid a “significant deposit.”

SpaceX will launch its Dragon 2 spacecraft on top of a Falcon Heavy rocket, with the two passengers flying solo and without any professional astronaut assistance. The Dragon 2 is designed similarly to an autonomous vehicle and is made possible thanks to NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which provided development funding.

Musk noted that the customers will not be blind to the risks.

“I think they are entering this with their eyes open, knowing there is some risk here,” Musk said. “They’re not naive. We’re going to do everything we can do to minimize our risk, but the risk is not zero.”

Before the around-the-moon mission, the Crew Dragon will begin using its primary purpose of ferrying astronauts to and from the ISS. First, a demo flight will occur later in 2017 in automatic mode without any passengers. A second flight will then take place with people on board, ideally in the second quarter of 2018. SpaceX is contracted to perform three fixed cargo missions, and one crewed one to the space station annually.

“By also flying privately crewed missions, which NASA has encouraged, long-term costs to the government decline and more flight reliability history is gained, benefiting both government and private missions,” the company said.

The announcement comes as NASA was considering a similar mission. The company planned to put astronauts on the first flight of its next giant rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). The intent was for NASA to fly the SLS for the first time without any passengers in the fall of next year. However, a note sent to NASA employees recently forecasted that the agency is considering making the first flight of the SLS a crewed mission instead. The flight would take a crew around the moon, following closely in SpaceX’s moon mission plans.

Source: New Atlas and The Verge