You're reading: Space Adventures: Tourists could fly around Moon in 2016-2017

Zhukovsky (Moscow region), August 17 (Interfax-AVN) - Space Adventures will announce the names of two space tourists, who will fly around the natural satellite of the Earth on board the Russian Soyuz spacecraft in five or six years, before the end of 2011.

"Such a flight is feasible in 2016-2017," head of the Russian office of Space Adventures Sergei Kostenko told Interfax-AVN at the MAKS-2011 aerospace show in Zhukovsky.

In late January 2011, Space Adventures announced that it sold to a private individual one of the two tickets to the first commercial space flight on board the Soyuz around the Moon for $150 million.

The chance to fly around the Moon on the Soyuz spacecraft was announced by Space Adventures in August 2005. At the time, the ticket price was $100 million.

Space Adventures was founded in 1998 and offers space flights to private individuals. The company has organized eight space tourist flights to the International Space Station.