Russian space officials say that they’ve signed off on a commercial deal with Virginia-based Space Adventures to fly two customers to the International Space Station in 2023 — and that one of the customers will get to do a spacewalk.
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In a news release, Roscosmos said the contract between Space Adventures and Russia’s main space company, Energia, calls for one of the spaceflight participants to go on an outing in the company of a professional astronaut from the space station’s Russian segment. Such an operation would typically require additional training at Russia’s Star City cosmonaut complex.
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Space Adventures has talked about selling a spacewalk for more than a decade, but if the deal goes ahead as planned, this would qualify as the world’s first commercial spacewalk. Seattle software billionaire Charles Simonyi, who flew to the space station in 2007 and 2009, said he passed up on the spacewalk option because he wasn’t “enough of an athlete” to do the required training.
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Last year, Roscosmos said it signed a contract with Space Adventures to send two customers to the space station in 2021. We’ve asked Space Adventures about the status of the deal for 2021 as well as the new report relating to 2023, and will update this report with anything we can pass along. The most recent space tourist to visit the space station was Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberte, in 2009.