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SpaceX is about to announce the first private passenger to tour the moon on one of its spacecraft, the company announced on Twitter Thursday.
"SpaceX has signed the world's first private passenger to ride the moon aboard our BFR launcher – an important step for ordinary people who dream of traveling in space to move," Elon wrote. Musk in a tweet. "Find out who's flying and why on Monday, September 17th."
He followed with a tweet later, writing: "Only 24 humans have been on the Moon in history.Nobody has visited since the last Apollo mission in 1972."
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On Twitter, we asked Elon Musk who was the passenger and simply replied with an emoji of the Japanese flag. Speculation has swirled after the tweet, leading some to believe that it could be the CEO of SoftBank, Masayoshi Son.
In 2017, the Japanese internet conglomerate SofBbank, which manages the $ 93 billion SoftBank Vision Fund, has invested in the satellite broadband provider OneWeb, a company that is also interested in SpaceX, according to documents disclosed by Quartz.
Monday, before the announcement, Musk presented two new photos of the WCR.
History of space tourism
Despite the excitement surrounding the announcement, space tourism has already occurred.
In 2009, the tourist Guy Laliberté flew to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz TMA-16 from Kazakhstan. Laliberté was the seventh and last space tourist, before the SpaceX announcement on Monday.
Other non-astronauts who flew into space include inventor Gregory Olsen and multimillionaire Dennis Tito, the first space tourist, after paying $ 20 million to spend 8 days on the ISS in April 2001.
Virgin Galactic, founded by Richard Branson, is also working on the development of commercial spacecraft to provide "suborbital spaceflight to space tourists," according to its website. And Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is also working with his company, Blue Origin, to bring tourists into space.
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SpaceX BFR
The BFR (also known as the Big Falcon Rocket) is SpaceX's reusable two-stage spacecraft system, which will weigh 9.7 million pounds and will carry a 330,000-pound payload to Mars and orbit Low Earth (LEO). The BFR, announced in September 2017, will eventually replace the other SpaceX launchers, the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy, as well as its Dragon spacecraft.
In April, Musk posted a picture on Instagram (which has since been deleted) of what he described as the main tool of his company's BFR interplanetary ship.
In an interview in March, Musk said the ship was under construction, adding, "I think we'll probably be able to do short flights, short flights, probably in the first half of next year."
Shortly after his successful launch of the Falcon Heavy, Musk said he expected a "full test" of the massive rocket in the next few years.
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Musk described a slightly reduced 348-foot rocket in September 2017 and announced that the private space company was planning to launch two cargo missions to Mars in 2022. He described these goals as "ambitious."
Two other freight missions would follow in 2024 to provide more construction materials, as well as two crewed flights, according to previous reports. The launch window on Mars is held every two years.
This story was updated from September 14th to include images of the new BFR.
Fox News & Edmund DeMarche and Associated Press contributed to this report. Follow Chris Ciaccia on Twitter @Chris_Ciaccia
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