SpaceX will launch two investors on a roughly 1-week mission around the moon. These investors have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission. The duo will ride a fully autonomous version of the company’s Dragon 2 spacecraft with no pilot.
SpaceX plans to launch the mission in late 2018 making use of the Falcon Heavy rocket, which was developed with internal SpaceX funding.Falcon Heavy is due to launch its first test flight this summer and, once successful, will be the most powerful vehicle to reach orbit after the Saturn V moon rocket.
The mission will depart from Kennedy Space Center’s historic Pad Cape Canaveral’s Launchpad 39A . This first demonstration mission will be in automatic mode, without people on. Once operational Crew Dragon missions are underway for NASA, SpaceX will launch the private mission on a journey to circumnavigate the moon and return to Earth.
The Dragon spacecraft already has a long flight heritage and these missions will build upon that heritage, extending it to deep space mission operations, an important milestone towards our ultimate goal of transporting humans to Mars.
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