$55m trip is out of this world

Three private citizens will pay $55 million each for an eight-day stay on the International Space Station.

Axiom Space of Houston has announced its crew for the flight due for next January or later. The crew will be aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule to fly to the space station. The plan is still subject to approval from NASA and its international partners.

Former NASA astronaut and Axiom Vice-President Michael Lopez-Alegria will be commander of the mission. The three private crew members have passed physical exams and will conduct 150 days of training to prepare for the mission.

The crew members are Larry Connor, an Ohio real estate and technology entrepreneur, who will be the pilot, Mark Pathy, a Canadian investor, and Eytan Stibbe, an Israeli businessman.

Axiom said Lopez-Alegria flew to space four times over a 20-year career at NASA and last visited the space station in 2007. He holds the record for having done the most spacewalks. He will become the first one to ever command both a civil and a commercial human space flight mission.

First private-mission pilot

Connor, 70, will be the first private-mission pilot in space flight and the second-oldest person flying into space. Pathy will be Canada's 11th astronaut. Stibbe is a former Israeli Air Force pilot and a close friend of the late Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, who died on the space shuttle Columbia during its reentry accident in 2003. Stibbe will be the second Israeli astronaut.

The crew will live aboard the US segment of the space station for 8 days, taking part in research projects.

NASA had tried to fly private citizens in the past under the Spaceflight Participant program, and US senators Jake Garn and Bill Nelson had taken a trip to space. However, after Christa McAuliffe, a teacher, died in the space shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986, NASA canceled the program.