Space tourism is on the rise. Can NASA keep up with it?

An official space tourism department could help prevent private rocket riders from clashing with working astronauts.

By Tatyana Woodall | Published Aug 12, 2022 4:59 PM EDT

a rocket stands on a launch pad late at night

When Axiom Space sent the first private crew to the International Space Station earlier this year , an overly aggressive itinerary caused some ripples in the professional astronauts’ work performance. Though it’s unclear if the trip interfered with the ISS crew’s science goals, the atmosphere aboard the station was strained—a classic example of too many cooks in the kitchen. Operations were impacted enough that the ISS and Axiom astronauts’ collective experiences motivated NASA to release new rules that commercial space companies will have to adhere to if they continue to join in on spaceflight activities going forward. What those changes could look like, however, will depend on how supportive and accepting NASA is to the still-emerging industry. 

Notably, the agency could require a former NASA astronaut to act as mission commander for private spaceflights, a move that would essentially make the agency a permanent liaison between public and US-based private space commerce. (The Axiom flight did already have a former NASA astronaut on board, Michael Lopez-Alegría , along with three first-time passengers—a businessman, an investor, and a real-estate magnate). 

“We got up there and, boy, we were overwhelmed,” López-Alegría said during a post-mission press conference. “Getting used to zero gravity is not an overnight thing.”

To avoid packed itineraries in flight, space tourism companies might also be required to provide documentation of the private astronauts’ work schedules. Additionally, because research activities weren’t originally envisioned as something space tourists would take part in, private companies will now submit research requests to the International Space Station National Laboratory no later than a year before expected launch. This is a huge hurdle for companies with similar objectives to Axiom, whose business model offers space tourists the opportunity to engage in activities like STEM outreach, experiments, photography and filmmaking once aboard the ISS. Members of the Axiom-1 crew helped conduct tests on self-assembling technology for future space habitats, cancer stem cells, and even air purification research. But by now NASA understands that successfully privatizing space will be harder than originally thought. 

The main reason why the ISS has had a difficult time integrating private space travel into its repertoire is because tourism has never been part of NASA’s charter, says Madhu Thangavelu , a lecturer at the University of Southern California and an expert on space tourism and architecture. “NASA is more interested in exploration, human factors, and in human physiology studies on the station, which is what they excel at,” he says. 

[Related: Here are all the ways to visit space this decade (if you’re extremely rich) ]

Axiom isn’t the agency’s first brush with the tourism industry—and previous attempts have been met with much more resistance. In 2001, Dennis Tito , an engineer and US millionaire, became the world’s first space tourist when he planned to visit Russia’s space station Mir . But his flight was diverted to the ISS when the Russian station was later deorbited . Tito stayed on the station for a little less than eight days, compared to the Axiom crew’s 10-day mission, but NASA later reported that his trip caused too many disruptions.  

“They were not at all welcoming to people roaming around the station when the agency is busy doing other things,” Thangavelu, who is also on the board of directors for the National Space Society, says. 

Such instances raise important moral and legal questions as private space tourism expands: Who makes the rules for astronaut behavior, misconduct, or accidents, and who should enforce them? Currently, these space travelers are free from international agency’s scrutiny that professional astronauts are subject to, which means that any misfortune aboard the station would open up a brand new can of worms for companies to deal with.  

Bigger and broader changes need to happen across the industry if space is to become easily and financially accessible to the general public. For example, instead of relying on private commercial companies to pave the way to public access, Thangavelu says that if NASA is serious about enabling commercial space activities, the agency should focus on creating a dedicated office for space tourism. 

“It’s my belief that if we give the station access to the private sector, we will get very creative in how to better manage the facility,” he says. Taking space adventurers on tours of the ISS or involving them in lab research, he says, could also drastically lower the costs of typical missions and lend structure to the preparation and resources needed to ensure both a private and professional astronaut’s continued safety.

[Related: Selling tickets to the space station is actually decades overdue ]

Other experts share Thangavelu’s views. Rachel Fu , director of the University of Florida’s Eric Friedheim Tourism Institute, says that compared to typical Earth-bound leisure activities, space tourism is a much more complicated endeavor that impacts our society on a global level. The industry needs to be constantly supervised, and having at least one government entity in the new global space race take that helm would benefit all involved parties, Fu says. Beyond tourism, private companies could further open up independent research and experiments in space. Fu also notes that the more people who are able to contribute to the next generation of knowledge, the better. 

There are currently no public plans by either NASA or the ISS to create a department solely for facilitating private spaceflights. At the moment, “NASA sees private astronaut missions as an important part of stimulating demand for commercial customers and astronauts to live and work in low-Earth orbit,“ Angela Hart, program manager of NASA’s Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Development, told Popular Science in a statement over email. She also said that it offers astronauts an opportunity to interact with crews of different training levels and goals. 

Even now, as space tourism continues its meteoric rise, being able to navigate the subtler social nuances of space travel is important as humans start to expand outwards towards the stars. And when deciding who gets to soar above Earth next, industry experts are likely to prioritize them. 

Tatyana Woodall

Tatyana Woodall is a regular contributor to Popular Science. Based in Ohio, she’s extremely interested in how science and technology intertwine in daily life.

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Exotic Cosmic Locales Available as Space Tourism Posters

nasa on space tourism

Fourteen space travel posters of colorful, exotic cosmic settings are now available free for downloading and printing.

Imagination is our window into the future. New travel posters from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, envision a day when the creativity of scientists and engineers will allow us to do things we can only dream of now.

You can take a virtual trip to 14 alien worlds, and maybe even plaster your living room with planetary art, via the new, futuristic space tourism posters. The posters are available free for downloading and printing at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/

Last year, five posters depicting planets beyond our solar system were introduced as part of JPL's Exoplanet Travel Bureau series. They are included in the latest set of 14 posters, which also show such locales as Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa, Saturn's vapor-spewing moon Enceladus, and the dwarf planet Ceres.

The posters are the brainchild of The Studio at JPL, a design and strategy team that works with JPL scientists and engineers to visualize and depict complex science and technology topics. Their work is used in designing space missions and in sharing the work of NASA/JPL with the public.

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

More information about JPL is at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

News Media Contact

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-0880

[email protected]

Leisure travel might be a little more exciting for the world’s wealthiest adventure seekers as space, long the exclusive domain of professional astronauts, is now accessible to tourists. In July 2021, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin each successfully launched suborbital tourism programs from their spaceports in New Mexico and Texas, respectively (with Blue Origin completing its second launch in October 2021). In September 2021, SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission kicked off the company’s orbital tourism program from the Kennedy Space Center’s historic Launch Complex 39A. Each of these companies hope to make space a popular destination by offering regular launch services to private citizens. Aspiring space tourists can expect to pay upwards of $250,000 for a seat on suborbital spacecrafts and an estimated $50 million for a ticket to orbit. Space enthusiasts on a budget can tour Spaceport America, where Virgin Galactic launches to space, for $50 or less.

These historic spaceflights  represent the most recent chapter in a longer history of space tourism. More than 20 years ago, Dennis Tito, the first “space tourist” (also known as “spaceflight participant”), flew to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft for a six-day stay. Tito donated the Sokol pressure suit he wore in space to the Museum in 2003. Since his flight, only six other individuals scored self-funded travel to space (one of these intrepid travelers flew twice). Space Adventures, a US-based travel agency to the stars, facilitated these multi-million dollar, out-of-this-world experiences in partnership with the Russian space agency, Roscosmos.

Side by side images of suit Dennis Tito wore when he launched to the International Space Station. On the left is a close-up of the suit when his name tag visible and the right, a full-figured suit from a sidle angle.

Dennis Tito wore this suit when he launched to the International Space Station on April 28, 2001. (Smithsonian Institution)

Although space itself remained inaccessible to private citizens until the 21st century, other places where Earth and space meet—such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) centers—have long been popular destinations for a different kind of space tourist.

The Space Age dawned in the golden age of the family road trip. Thanks to the proliferation of private automobile ownership, an expanding interstate highway system, and the advent of more generous vacation policies in the workplace, Americans ventured from home in greater numbers in the 1960s than at any earlier time in the nation’s history. Millions of these travelers included on their itineraries NASA centers, particularly those with ties to the human spaceflight program: the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama; the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Brevard County, Florida; and the Manned Spacecraft Center (known since 1973 as the Johnson Space Center) in Houston, Texas.

NASA centers were not prepared for the tourists who appeared en masse outside their gates. In the early 1960s, the centers operated much like—and were often physically adjacent to—secure military installations. For reasons of national security, the centers restricted access to official visitors only. In response to curious onlookers, the centers developed ad hoc visitor programs. At the same time, proactive civic leaders and enterprising business-people responded to the presence of space center tourists by developing their own space-themed attractions, including museums, halls of fame, and amusement parks, and amenities, such as motels, hotels, and restaurants.

At the Kennedy Space Center, for example, public affairs officers facilitated increasing access to NASA’s launch complex between 1964 and 1967. Their efforts began while the spaceport was under construction with a modest roadside trailer featuring wall-mounted exhibitions. They soon expanded visitor programming to include self-guided driving tours on weekends and holidays during breaks in construction activity. In 1966, the space center partnered with Trans World Airlines (TWA) to operate an escorted bus tour program.

Black and white image of a crowd of people lined up with a bus arriving at the side of the shot. There is a NASA logo and a sign that says "Tours"

Trans World Airlines (TWA) operated the bus tour program at the Kennedy Space Center in the 1960s. (NASA/KSC Spaceport News)

The following year, the Visitor Information Center opened to the public. It featured indoor exhibition and presentation facilities, an outdoor “rocket garden” that became a popular backdrop for family photos, and a depot for the bus tour program. The architect included all the amenities a traveler might need, such as restrooms, food concessions, a gift shop, and a pay phone, which is now on display at our Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Shaped like a Mercury capsule, the pay phone was painted in a playful tropical teal color, which was en vogue at other Florida attractions at the time. Since 1967, the Visitor Information Center has continued to evolve and expand, reflecting developments in spaceflight and the evolving expectations of 21st century vacationers. Some 1.5 million people visit annually.

A phonebooth in turquoise color that is shaped like a space capsule with a dial phone in the middle.

This phonebooth was installed at the Visitor Information Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center during the 1960s. (Smithsonian Institution)

Whether venturing to space, visiting a spaceport, or engaging in space-related recreation, individuals and families are likely to continue the tradition of incorporating space activities as part of their leisure time. As we enter the next chapter in the history of space tourism, questions about the significance of these experiences endure: What do “space tourists” hope to gain from their encounter with space or space sites? What does their choice of vacation destination say about their individual identities and the cultural significance of space? Who has access to these experiences and who is left out? And how will space tourism reshape communities on Earth as the industry evolves?

We rely on the generous support of donors, sponsors, members, and other benefactors to share the history and impact of aviation and spaceflight, educate the public, and inspire future generations.  With your help, we can continue to preserve and safeguard the world’s most comprehensive collection of artifacts representing the great achievements of flight and space exploration.

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Regions & Countries

Americans’ views of space: u.s. role, nasa priorities and impact of private companies, 55% of americans expect routine space tourism over next 50 years.

An image of The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying NASA's Crew-5 Dragon spacecraft lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 5, 2022. (With credits to Gregg Newton/AFP via Getty Images)

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand Americans’ views of space issues. For this analysis, we surveyed 10,329 U.S. adults from May 30 to June 4, 2023.

Everyone who took part in the survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way, nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for this report , along with responses, and its methodology .

In a changing world of space exploration defined by intensifying private efforts and competition between a growing number of nations, Americans continue to see an essential role for the United States as a leader in space exploration, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

A bar chart showing that 69% of Americans say it is essential for U.S. to be a leader in space exploration

About seven-in-ten Americans say it is essential that the U.S. continue to be a world leader in space, while 30% say this is not an essential role for the country. Support for a U.S. leadership role in space is widely held across groups, including by majorities of Republicans and Democrats alike.

More than 50 years ago, space exploration was a race to the moon between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. In 1998, the International Space Station launch marked a highlight for international cooperation in space between the U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe.

Today, more countries, such as India and China, are pursuing their own goals in space, which could challenge the U.S. as a world leader. China, a country many Americans view as a competitor , has goals of sending human astronauts to the moon and expanding its own space station.

Most Americans continue to believe that the U.S. space agency NASA has a critical role to play, even as private space companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are increasingly involved in space. Overall, 65% of U.S. adults say it is essential that NASA continue to be involved in space exploration, the survey finds. A smaller share (32%) believe that private companies will ensure enough progress is made in space exploration, even without NASA’s involvement.

The new survey takes a wide-ranging look at Americans’ attitudes toward space, including the contributions of private companies, priorities for NASA and public expectations for the next 50 years in space. Other important findings from the survey of 10,329 U.S. adults conducted May 30 to June 4, 2023, include:

  • NASA objectives : Monitoring asteroids that could potentially hit the Earth ranks at the top of the public’s priority list for NASA. Monitoring the planet’s climate system also ranks highly as a priority for NASA. But relatively few Americans say it should be a top priority to send human astronauts to the moon or Mars.
  • Space tourism : 55% of U.S. adults expect that people will routinely travel in space as tourists in the next 50 years. However, Americans, on balance, are not enthusiastic about traveling to space themselves: 35% say they would be interested in orbiting Earth in a spacecraft, compared with 65% who say they would not be interested in this.
  • Evaluations of private space companies : Americans are more likely to say private space companies are doing a mostly good job than a bad job at building safe and reliable spacecraft, making important contributions to space exploration, and opening up space travel to more people. Still, many are unsure how private companies are doing in these areas, reflecting limited familiarity with them. And the public strikes a less positive tone when it comes to how private space companies are doing limiting debris in space from rockets and satellites: 26% say they are doing a mostly bad job, compared with 21% who say they are doing a mostly good job (53% say they’re not sure).
  • Americans’ engagement with space : 47% of Americans say they’ve done at least one of four space-related activities in the last year, including 26% who say they’ve looked at an image from a space telescope, such as the James Webb Space Telescope.

Future expectations for developments in space

As Americans look to the future of space, a large share expect problems with human-made debris. More than half expect space tourism to become routine. But the public is less confident that other events will happen – including discovering intelligent life and building colonies on other planets.

About seven-in-ten Americans (69%) think there will definitely or probably be a major problem with debris in space from rockets, satellites and other human-made objects over the next 50 years. Fewer (30%) think this definitely or probably will not happen.

A chart showing that 55% of Americans think people will routinely travel in space as tourists in the next 50 years

When it comes to space tourism, a majority of Americans (55%) expect people will routinely travel to space as tourists by the year 2073, while 44% think this will not happen. The share of Americans who think space tourism will become routine over the next 50 years is up 5 percentage points since 2018, the last time the Center asked this question .

Americans see other futuristic possibilities in space as less likely in the next 50 years. Still, 44% think the U.S. will definitely or probably fight against other nations in space in the next 50 years. In 2019, the U.S. established Space Force as a separate branch of the military.

Four-in-ten Americans believe intelligent life will definitely or probably be discovered on another planet over the next 50 years; 58% don’t expect this to happen. In a 2021 Pew Research Center survey , 65% of Americans said their best guess was that intelligent life does exist on other planets.

Only about one-third of Americans say colonies that can be lived in for long periods of time will be built on other planets in the next 50 years, while 65% say this will not happen. The share of Americans who think space colonies will be built in the next 50 years is virtually unchanged since 2018.

Public views of NASA’s top priorities in space

A chart showing that Americans place monitoring asteroids that could hit Earth at top of NASA’s priority list

NASA is engaged in a wide range of activities in space, including exploration and applied and basic research. When asked what NASA’s priorities should be, Americans rank monitoring asteroids that could hit the Earth and monitoring the Earth’s climate system at the top of the list. There’s far less public urgency for NASA to send humans to the moon or Mars and to search for other planets that could support life.

Six-in-ten Americans say it’s a top priority for NASA to monitor asteroids and other objects that could potentially hit the earth. Another 30% say this is an important, but lower, priority for NASA, and just 9% say this is not too important or should not be done.

Monitoring key parts of the Earth’s climate system ranks second on the public’s list: 50% say this should be a top priority for NASA.

Fewer than half of Americans rate the other seven objectives the Center asked about as top priorities for NASA.

Large majority of Americans see NASA favorably

About three-quarters of Americans said they have a favorable opinion of NASA in a March 2022 Pew Research Center survey . Only 9% said they had an unfavorable view. Of the 16 federal agencies included in the survey, NASA had the third-highest favorable rating.

Large shares of Democrats (79%) and Republicans (71%), including those who lean to each party, expressed a favorable opinion of NASA.

Four-in-ten say conducting basic scientific research to increase knowledge of space should be a top priority. And 35% say developing technologies that could be adapted for other uses should be a top priority. About three-in-ten each say conducting scientific research on how space travel affects human health and searching for raw materials that could be used on Earth are top priorities for NASA. Most Americans, however, say each of these four objectives are either a top or important, but lower, priority for NASA.

Few Americans say searching for life and planets that could support life (16%) should be a top priority for NASA; a larger share (39%) say this is not too important or that NASA should not do this.

Just 12% of Americans say sending human astronauts to explore the moon should be a top priority for NASA, and only 11% say this about sending human astronauts to explore Mars. Larger shares think both of these things are not too important for NASA or that they should not be done (41% and 43%, respectively).

In April, NASA announced the crew for the Artemis II mission , scheduled for late 2024, which would fly around the moon, taking astronauts the furthest from Earth since the 1970s. The next planned mission would be for a lunar landing. Missions to the moon are considered important preparation for sending astronauts to Mars.

Compared with 2018, Americans see many of these priorities as less pressing than they did five years ago, with declines in the shares who call each a top priority. Still, large shares continue to view most of them as important, but lower, priorities for NASA. (Refer to the topline for more details.)

Those most familiar with NASA are more likely to place the highest priority on a range of objectives for the agency

About one-in-ten Americans say they have heard or read a lot about NASA in the last year. Another 56% say they have heard a little, and 33% say they have heard nothing at all. These shares are virtually unchanged since 2018.

Those most familiar with NASA are more likely than those who have heard less about the agency to say each of the nine objectives included in the survey should be a top priority for NASA. For instance:

  • Those who have heard a lot about NASA are about twice as likely as those who have heard nothing at all to say conducting basic scientific research should be a top priority (59% vs. 28%).
  • 44% of those who are most familiar with NASA say conducting scientific research on how space travel affects human health should be a top priority, compared with 24% of those least familiar with the space agency.

For more information, refer to the Appendix .

Men are especially likely to support a U.S. leadership role in space, be familiar with NASA  

Majorities of men and women say it is essential that the U.S. continue to be a world leader in space exploration, though men are 12 percentage points more likely than women to take this view (75% vs. 63%).

Men are also somewhat more likely than women to say they are familiar with NASA, saying they have heard at least a little about the U.S. space agency in the past year (75% of men vs. 60% of women).

Nonetheless, men and women have largely similar views on most of NASA’s priorities included in the survey. For instance, nearly equal shares of men (61%) and women (60%) say it should be a top priority for NASA to monitor asteroids and other objects that could potentially hit the Earth.

One area in which there is a sizable difference between men and women is their rating of NASA conducting basic scientific research: 47% of men say conducting basic scientific research to increase knowledge of space should be a top priority, compared with 35% of women.

For more, refer to the Appendix .

Republicans and Democrats have much in common in their views on the U.S. role in space and NASA’s priorities, but differ on monitoring Earth’s climate

Republicans and Democrats – including those who lean to each party – are nearly equally likely to say the U.S. should be a world leader in space exploration (72% and 69%, respectively). Partisans also have largely similar views on many of NASA’s priorities.

For example, majorities of Democrats (64%) and Republicans (57%) say monitoring asteroids that could hit the Earth should be a top priority for NASA. At the other end of the spectrum, relatively few Democrats and Republicans place top priority on sending human astronauts to the moon (12% and 13%) or Mars (12% and 10%).

However, partisans differ over how much priority NASA should put on monitoring the Earth’s climate system. About seven-in-ten Democrats say monitoring key parts of the climate should be a top priority for NASA. By contrast, just 30% of Republicans place the highest priority on this (25% say it’s not too important or should not be done at all). Previous Center research has shown that Republicans are much less likely than Democrats to view climate change as a major problem and to say it poses a major threat to the country .

Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to prioritize conducting basic research to understand space, though the difference in views is more modest: 47% of Democrats say conducting basic research to increase knowledge and understanding of space should be a top priority for NASA, compared with 35% of Republicans. Past Center surveys have found Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say government investments in basic scientific research usually pay off in the long run.

For more on views on NASA’s priorities by gender, political party and education, refer to the Appendix .

Americans see NASA playing essential role as private companies become more involved

The private sector has become increasingly involved in space exploration. Companies like Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and Blue Origin are taking people to space in their own private spacecrafts . And NASA is increasingly partnering with private companies to accomplish its missions.

Still, Americans by and large view NASA as critical to space exploration: 65% say it is essential that NASA continue to be involved in space exploration, while far fewer (32%) say private companies will ensure enough progress is made in space exploration, even without NASA’s involvement. While the private space landscape has evolved significantly over the last five years, public views on NASA’s role are nearly identical to those measured in 2018, the last time the Center asked the question.

A chart showing that 65% of Americans believe it’s essential for NASA to continue to be involved in space exploration

The belief that NASA should continue to be involved in space exploration is widely held across demographic groups. For instance, similar majorities of the youngest and oldest adults say it is essential that NASA continue to be involved in space exploration (65% of adults ages 18 to 29 vs. 67% of adults 65 and older).

On balance, more than half of both Republicans and Democrats think it is essential that NASA continue to be involved in space exploration, though Democrats are 20 percentage points more likely than Republicans to hold this view (76% vs. 56%).

Americans give private space companies more positive than negative ratings on building safe and reliable spacecraft, contributing to space exploration and opening up space travel

When asked to assess four core areas of private space companies’ performance, Americans offer more positive than negative assessments of how private companies are doing at building safe and reliable spacecraft, contributing to space exploration, and opening up space travel to more people.

Ratings are more mixed when it comes to the job private companies are doing limiting debris from objects like rockets and satellites. And across all four areas of performance, many Americans say they are unsure, reflecting the limits of the public’s familiarity with the operations of private space companies.

In three of the four areas, Americans are far more positive than negative:

  • More Americans think private space companies are doing a mostly good job than a mostly bad job building rockets and spacecraft that are safe and reliable (48% vs. 12%); about four-in-ten say they aren’t sure how private space companies are doing at this.
  • 47% say private space companies are doing a mostly good job making important contributions to space exploration, compared with just 12% who say they are doing a mostly bad job; 40% of Americans say they aren’t sure.
  • Public ratings also tilt positive when it comes to the role these companies are playing opening up space travel to more people: 41% say they are doing a mostly good job in this area, while 15% say they are doing a mostly bad job and 43% say they’re not sure.

A chart showing that Public ratings of private space companies tilt positive for most aspects of their performance

By contrast, evaluations of the job private space companies are doing limiting space debris are much less positive.

Slightly more Americans think private space companies are doing a mostly bad job than a mostly good job limiting debris from rockets and satellites in space (26% vs. 21%). Roughly half of U.S. adults (53%) say they are not sure how private space companies are doing on this issue.

Democrats are especially critical of private space companies’ efforts to limit debris in space. Among Democrats, 34% say they are doing a mostly bad job at this, while just 16% say they are doing a mostly good job (49% say they aren’t sure). Among Republicans, more say private companies are doing a mostly good than mostly bad job limiting debris in space (27% to 18%, with 54% not sure).

For the three other aspects of private space company performance included in the survey, partisan groups are largely in agreement, though Republicans offer positive assessments by a wider margin than do Democrats. For more, refer to the Appendix .

Americans who are most familiar with private space companies offer largely positive evaluations

About two-in-ten Americans say they have heard or read a lot about private space companies developing space exploration capabilities, while 54% say they have heard a little about this and 24% say they have heard nothing at all. The share of Americans who have heard at least a little about private space companies’ efforts is up 13 percentage points since 2018. Men and those with higher levels of education are particularly likely to say they are familiar with private space companies.

Americans most familiar with private companies’ space efforts are especially positive in their evaluations of the job they are doing. Large majorities of those who have heard a lot about private space companies say they are doing a mostly good job building reliable spacecraft and rockets, as well as making important contributions to space exploration.

For example, among those who say they have heard a lot about private space companies, 72% say they are doing a mostly good job making important contributions to space exploration, while 12% say they are doing a mostly bad job and 16% are not sure.

Those with less familiarity are far less likely to give these private companies a positive rating in building reliable spacecraft and rockets and making important contributions to space. Still, small shares in this group give private companies negative ratings; sizable shares say they are not sure.

Americans’ interest and participation in space-related activities

A chart showing that 35% of Americans say they would be interested in traveling on a private spacecraft to orbit the Earth

When it comes to interest in space tourism, more Americans say they would not be interested in orbiting Earth in a spacecraft (65%) than say they would be interested in this (35%). Interest is down 7 percentage points from 2018, when 42% said they would definitely or probably be interested in this.

The space tourism industry is expected to expand significantly in coming decades, with multiple companies engaged in commercial spaceflight operations.

Younger adults are more interested in orbiting Earth than older ones. About half of those ages 18 to 29 say they would definitely or probably be interested in orbiting the Earth in a private spacecraft. Interest is lower among older adults. For instance, just 17% of those ages 65 and older say they would want to do this. Still, interest among the youngest adults in orbiting the Earth is significantly lower than in 2018, when 65% expressed interest.

In addition to age differences, men (46%) are more likely than women (25%) to say they are interested in traveling on a private spacecraft to orbit the Earth.

Americans’ engagement with space-related activities

The survey measures some of the ways Americans can engage with space-related activities and events in their own lives. Most Americans say they’ve done at least one space-related activity before, like visiting a planetarium or watching a space launch, though the shares who have done so more recently (within the last year) are more modest.

A chart showing that Almost half of Americans have engaged in a space-related activity within the last year

Overall, 26% of U.S. adults say they have looked at an image from a space telescope, such as the James Webb Space Telescope , in the past year. The James Webb Space Telescope was launched at the end of 2021 and is the largest telescope in space.

A similar share (23%) say they’ve seen an astronomical event such as an eclipse or meteor shower in the last year, and 19% say they’ve watched a space launch within the last 12 months. A relatively smaller share (11%) say they’ve visited a planetarium or space museum recently.

Taken together, nearly half of Americans (47%) say they’ve done at least one of these space-related activities in the last year.

Men are more likely than women to say they’ve participated in at least one space-related activity within the last year (55% vs. 38%). The gender gap is seen across most items included in the survey; the largest gap across these items is in the shares who say they’ve looked at an image from a space telescope in the last year (36% of men vs. 17% of women).

A chart showing that Men are more likely than women to have taken part in a space-related activity recently

There are also differences in engagement with space activities by education and income levels.

Those with higher levels of education are more likely to have participated in a space-related activity recently than those with lower levels of education. For instance, 59% of postgraduates have done at least one of four space-related activities within the last year, compared with 39% of those with a high school diploma or less education.

There’s a similar pattern by income, with higher earners more likely to engage with space activities than those earning less.

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Ramin Skibba

Here’s a Sneak Peek at the Far-Out Future of Space Travel

moon landscape

From Star Trek–like medical scanners to concepts for off-planet agriculture like in The Expanse , science fiction has often inspired actual research at NASA and other space agencies. This week, researchers are meeting at a virtual conference for the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program to brainstorm and investigate sci-fi-like ideas, some of which may very well shape the missions of the next 20 years.

A drone helicopter hopping about a Martian crater or a lunar rover that maps moon ice might have seemed far-fetched a decade ago, but the copter actually flew earlier this year, and the rover is in the planning stages. Now the conference organizers have solicited proposals for more exploratory projects, a few of which the agency might eventually fund. “We invest in long-term, far-out technologies, and most of them probably won’t work. The ones that do might change everything. It’s high risk, high payoff, almost like a venture capital investment portfolio,” says Jason Derleth, the NIAC program executive.

The program isn’t focused on incremental developments but instead seeks game-changing technologies, ones that are 10 times better than the state of the art, Derleth says. He likens it to the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which also explores extremely speculative concepts but developed the precursor to the modern internet, among other innovations.

The annual conference , which continues through Thursday, September 23, is publicly viewable on NIAC’s livestream . Some of the proposals discussed so far—such as for new ways to launch foldable space stations or astronaut habitats, or to extract resources from other worlds—revolve around the understanding that, for lengthy space voyages, you have to make the most of every rocket launch.

The next generation of space travelers will need resources for survival, for protective structures, and to fuel the journey further or return home. “This leaves us with two options: Take everything with us, like if you were going on a hiking trip in the desert. Or find new and creative ways to use whatever is already there,” says Amelia Greig, an aerospace engineer at University of Texas at El Paso, who presented at the conference on Tuesday.

To aid creative reuse of lunar resources, Greig and her colleagues propose a technology called ablative arc mining, which would slurp up water ice and the kinds of metals that could be used as building materials. “It’s like using controlled lightning bolts to mine the moon,” she said during her presentation. Her concept describes a van-sized moon crawler—named after the Jawa sandcrawlers of Star Wars —that picks a spot, and then places a ringed device that it carries on its front end parallel to the ground. Electric arcs zap across the ring, which can be made as large as a meter in diameter, ripping particles from the moon’s surface. Those particles, now charged, can then be moved and sorted by the machine’s electromagnetic fields. That way, rather than scoping just one resource, a single piece of equipment could fill one container with water, another with oxygen attached to other elements, and others with silicon, aluminum, or other metal particles.

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render of lunarscape

An artistic representation of the ablative arc mining system deployed into a crater near the lunar south pole.

But, like all early concepts, it faces practical challenges that would have to be overcome: In this case, the moon’s dusty environment could cause problems by getting stuck in the machinery, which would have to be made dust-proof. To hunt for water ice, the crawlers also will have to trundle into permanently shadowed craters, which contain water at about 6 percent by mass but are extremely cold and dark. The crawlers’ electronics would have to be designed to operate in those rugged conditions and with a non-solar power source. It also would be tough for any astronaut to oversee them, though they could monitor the mining from the crater’s rim. NASA estimates that permanent lunar settlements will need around 10,000 kilograms of water per year. That would require at least 20 of these kinds of crawlers roving about, gradually collecting those supplies, unless this technology was supplemented with something else. For now, Greig just hopes to test a smaller demonstration version of the crawler in a few years.

Space mining projects have also prompted ethical questions. For example, scientists and others have raised concerns about lunar mining permanently changing the look of the moon in the night sky. But Greig points out that ablative arc mining wouldn’t look like the environmentally harmful pit mines on Earth; the mining region could be spread out, making some craters only slightly deeper. And as for sustainability issues, she says, “there’s enough water to last human settlements hundreds of years.”

Stop-motion representation of the arc mining process on the lunar surface.

As a potential launching point for moon-goers and expeditions to deep space, NASA has proposed a space station orbiting the moon called the Lunar Gateway . But Zachary Manchester, a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, argues that the limited size of rockets allows few options for launching large structures for a lunar station. “If you want something that’s bigger than a rocket fairing, which is at most a few meters, it has to get launched in multiple rockets and assembled in orbit, like the International Space Station . Or it has to somehow get scrunched up into that rocket and then somehow expand out,” Manchester says.

At a session Wednesday, he and Jeffrey Lipton, a mechanical engineer at the University of Washington, proposed a space station that would fit into that confined space. Then, once deployed, it would unfold autonomously, like origami, into a full-sized structure, some 150 times bigger than its folded size. Preliminary designs involve a many-jointed structure made of titanium, aluminum, or another metal.

Since future astronauts will likely be on-station for a while, it would need to rotate to generate artificial gravity to avoid the deleterious health effects of prolonged periods in zero-G. But humans are sensitive to spinning; no one wants to live on a merry-go-round. “If you try to build a rotating space habitat, the only way to do it without making people motion-sick is to spin at up to two revolutions per minute,” Manchester says. To produce Earth-like gravity, such a space station needs to be a kilometer across, he argues. Yet squishing such a massive structure into a tiny space until it’s deployed poses a significant engineering challenge. In addition, to make their idea a reality, Manchester and Lipton ultimately need to figure out how to make the unfolding process not get jammed, despite the structure’s thousands of links and joints.

render of moon satellite

An artist's illustration of the Lunar Gateway in orbit around the moon.

Like packing for the biggest road trip ever, NASA will face similar challenges when fitting everything needed for moon or Mars structures onto rockets. To lighten the load, some scientists have suggested using Martian rocks as material for 3D-printing parts of structures. (A simulated lunar regolith is currently being test-printed aboard the International Space Station.) But Lynn Rothschild, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, has a completely different idea: making structures out of mushrooms—or “mycotecture,” as she calls it. “The humble mushroom can provide an unbelievable building material. It’s completely natural, compostable, and the ultimate green building,” Rothschild says.

Although fungi could be used to grow the material for actual bricks and mortar that astronauts could use for construction, the best kind of space habitat would be assembled before they even arrive. Her team’s proposal involves launching a lander that would include plastic scaffolding and fungal mycelia, white filaments that make the root structure of fungi. (Like yeasts, mycelia can survive for a while without being fed.) The scaffolding would be a lattice of square hollow plastic cells, stitched into layers to make the shape of the final structure. On Mars, it would inflate to perhaps the size of a garage. Using water and oxygen—at least some of which would likely have been sourced or generated on Mars—the fungi would grow along those stitches and fill the cells, eventually turning a tent-like structure into a full-fledged building.

For strength and protection from space radiation, Rothschild thinks some kind of dark fungi could do the trick. “Black fungi—they make you say ‘Blecch,’ they look kind of disgusting. But the black pigment tends to protect from radiation, protecting the fungi and the people inside the habitat,” Rothschild says. She hopes to send a prototype to the International Space Station in the next few years.

Unlike the moon, Mars was once friendly to life . So Rothschild is designing the scaffolding to prevent any chance of renegade fungi escaping beyond the astronauts’ structures. (The last thing NASA wants is for a search for life on other worlds to turn up something that actually came from Earth .) In her team’s design, the fungi are essentially “double-bagged,” with an extra layer in the plastic lattice to ensure they all stay in.

To address those issues, space agencies have “planetary protection” experts like Moogega Cooper, supervisor of the Biotechnology and Planetary Protection Group at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who spoke at the NIAC conference. “Anywhere you are possibly interacting with liquid water that is inherent to the place, your exploring would definitely catch our attention. Where you find water you may find life,” she says. The United States is one of the original signatories of the Outer Space Treaty, which requires that every space agency or company that wants to send a mission to an alien world make sure the spacecraft and all the equipment aboard are sterilized.

While the NIAC program has a budget of just $8.5 million per year, it supports many exploratory projects. A few of the ideas presented at this week’s conference could go on to the next level, or could get picked up by other agencies or private companies, as in the case of an earlier proposal to propel a smartphone-sized spacecraft to another stellar system with lasers, which inspired Breakthrough Starshot, a privately funded enterprise. Among a few of the topics on the menu for the rest of Wednesday and Thursday: multiple presentations about moon-based radio telescopes , as well as one about personal rovers for astronauts (since Artemis astronauts will be carrying 220-pound packs) and one about planting mushrooms in space regolith to make a more Earth-like growing soil.

“All of the concepts that are awarded are pushing the edge of our understanding, and they really allow us to take science fiction and make it science fact,” Cooper says.

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nasa on space tourism

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NASA's First Space Tourism Mission Scheduled to Launch on April 3

The amateur astronauts are reported to have paid around $55 million per ticket..

Adele Ankers-Range Avatar

NASA is gearing up to launch its first-ever space tourism mission to the International Space Station, with liftoff currently scheduled for April 3.

As Digital Trends reports, the space agency is just days away from launching its very first privately crewed mission that will see three amateur astronauts travel to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which will lift off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on April 3, with the company's Falcon 9 rocket powering its trip to orbit.

Gorgeous Photos of Earth from Space

Nighttime view of Earth from the International Space Station (ISS). Image Credit: NASA

Former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría will serve as commander on the Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) alongside a trio of space tourists who reportedly paid around $55 million to travel to the space station and spend eight days at the off-Earth outpost where they will conduct "scientific research, outreach, and commercial activities," per a recent NASA press release .

López-Alegría, who is now a vice president at Axiom Space, will be joined on the mission by Canadian investor and philanthropist Mark Pathy, American entrepreneur Larry Connor, and former Israeli Air Force pilot Eytan Stibbe, who have participated in hundreds of hours of training ahead of the upcoming launch, including test driving the Dragon spacecraft .

After months of training, the #Ax1 Crew is getting ready to head into quarantine for the final phase of preparation for this historic mission. Check out the new crew photo: https://t.co/UhX4uACuAN pic.twitter.com/gaPhcYfTAK — Axiom Space (@Axiom_Space) March 16, 2022

The International Space Station has been orbiting Earth for 23 years, but NASA has plans to retire the outpost in 2030 . It could possibly be succeeded by Axiom Space's commercial space station or the Orbital Reef station, which is being built in low Earth orbit by Blue Origin in partnership with several other space companies, including Boeing, Sierra Space, and more.

The space tourism race is certainly intensifying, with more and more companies gearing up to offer commercial flights to space via various alternative modes of transport. World View announced last year that it had designed a 14-million-cubic-foot, helium-filled balloon capsule to send curious travellers to "the edge of space" for $50,000 per ticket.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Thumbnail image credit: NASA.

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Of all the high-flying tourism ventures spawned by space-obsessed billionaires, Virgin Galactic, founded by Richard Branson, offers perhaps the most unconventional approach. It doesn’t use big rockets or gumdrop-shaped capsules. Instead, an airplane takes off with a spacecraft strapped to its wing. The spacecraft, shaped like a plane itself, holds the paying customers and more pilots. When the airplane reaches a certain altitude, it releases the spacecraft. The spacecraft’s pilots then ignite its engine, and the vehicle soars straight up, to the fuzzy boundary that separates us from the rest of the universe, before gliding back down and landing on a runway.

The spaceplane experience is a stark contrast to Blue Origin’s suborbital jaunts and SpaceX’s orbital missions, but Virgin Galactic’s passengers still have a few surreal minutes of weightlessness, and they get to see the planet gleaming against the darkness of space. Those passengers have included the first former Olympian to reach space, as well as the first mother-daughter duo and, most recently, the first Pakistani .

In the midst of all that, Virgin Galactic clocked a first that raised some eyebrows: The company withheld the passenger list from the public before a takeoff last month, divulging the travelers’ names only after they had landed. The company never publicly explained its preflight secrecy. (Virgin Galactic did not respond to a request for comment.) Yesterday, Virgin Galactic announced its next flight, scheduled for November; the company kept one of the three listed passengers anonymous, saying only that the person is “of Franco-Italian nationality.”

Virgin is of course within its rights to withhold passenger names before takeoff. After all, airlines and railroads keep private the names of their customers. But Virgin Galactic’s choice to do so marks a subtle shift—the latest in U.S. spaceflight’s arc from a publicly funded national mission to private tourism. NASA, as a taxpayer-funded organization, has always had to provide the public with launch lists and livestreams. But the age of space tourism raises a host of questions: How much openness do space-tourism companies owe the public? How much privacy do they owe their customers? Before the Virgin flight returned home last month, it operated almost like a privately chartered plane, its movements known to relevant aviation agencies but its passengers’ names undisclosed to the public. Commercial spaceflight and air travel are still far from alike, but in this particular aspect, the space-tourism industry may be drifting toward its private-jet era.

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In practice, the space-tourism industry is barely more than two years old, and it’s “still finding its norms,” says Carissa Christensen, a space consultant and the CEO of BryceTech, an analytics and engineering firm. The first passenger rosters were marquee news in 2021, when Branson and Jeff Bezos were racing to be the first to ride their own spacecraft , and Elon Musk’s SpaceX was working to send a quartet of private astronauts with zero spaceflight experience into orbit.

All three of their companies publicized, and even hyped, the passenger lists, in some cases months in advance. Wally Funk, an octogenarian aviator who had outperformed male candidates in astronaut tests during the 1960s but was kept out of the astronaut corps because she was a woman, flew alongside Bezos . Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman, paid for three other people to fly into orbit with him on SpaceX; all of them gave countless interviews before launch. And who can forget the hype ahead of William Shatner’s flight, and the Star Trek star’s unfiltered, emotional remarks after landing?

The rosters became less noteworthy as time went on: The customers were no longer memorable guests who got free rides, but simply very wealthy people who could afford the trips on their own. Last month’s temporarily secret Virgin Galactic fliers included a real-estate investor from Las Vegas, a South African entrepreneur, and a British engineer who founded a company that builds race cars. Michelle Hanlon, a space lawyer and the executive director of the University of Mississippi’s Center for Air and Space Law, told me that she was mildly surprised by Virgin Galactic’s decision to withhold the passengers’ identities before takeoff, but that the decision did not strike her as inappropriate.

“From a paparazzi standpoint, if it’s Ashton Kutcher, the world’s gonna care a little bit more than if it’s Michelle Hanlon,” Hanlon said. (Kutcher did, in fact, purchase a Virgin Galactic ticket in 2012, but he later sold it back to the company after his wife and fellow actor, Mila Kunis, talked him out of going.) And from a legal standpoint, nothing inappropriate occurred, Hanlon said; there are no existing requirements for a private company to disclose passenger names. Space travelers must sign waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration outlining the risks associated with the activity, she said, but the companies they’re flying with are not required to provide the agency with a passenger list.

Read: Jeff Bezos knows who paid for him to go to space

Passenger names aren’t the only details of commercial spaceflight that are becoming more opaque. When SpaceX launched its first set of private astronauts, the company shared significantly less live footage of their experience in orbit than they did when NASA astronauts test-drove the capsule a year earlier. During its last two flights, Virgin Galactic decided not to provide a livestream, giving updates on social media instead.

Because there are no regulations, it’s difficult to say when the companies’ right to privacy becomes a concerning level of secrecy. NASA overshares when it comes to its astronauts and their mission, because the public—which funds the agency—expects it. Americans might also expect a good look at SpaceX customers who visit the International Space Station, which relies on billions of dollars of taxpayer money, and where private visitors share meals with government astronauts. But what about other kinds of SpaceX missions, which go into orbit without disembarking at any government-owned facility? The company developed its crewed launch services with significant investment from NASA, so virtually every SpaceX trip indirectly involves government money. That doesn’t necessarily mean SpaceX is obligated to share as the space agency does, even if people on the ground feel that it should.

Another major difference between NASA missions and private ones, of course, is that astronauts are at work, whereas many space tourists are presumably just having fun. Caryn Schenewerk, a consultant who specializes in commercial spaceflight at her firm CS Consulting, told me that she thinks commercial spaceflight will adopt the practices of other forms of adventure tourism. Take skydiving, for example: Schenewerk said that she has signed paperwork granting the skydiving company permission to use footage of her experience for its own purposes. “There’s some expectation of privacy on the individual’s behalf that then has to be actively waived for the company’s benefit,” she said.

The once-anonymous Virgin Galactic passengers on the September flight have since publicly shared their stories , basking in the awe of their experience. Christensen told me that most future tourists will likely do the same. “A big part of the fun is other people knowing that you’ve done it,” she said. Flying to space isn’t exactly something to be modest about: Fewer than 700 people have done it since human beings first achieved the feat, in the early 1960s, and we know all of their names. If Virgin’s new mystery passenger doesn’t reveal their name, they really will make history.

Read: Seeing Earth from space will change you

Many spacefarers—the Soviet cosmonauts who inhabited the first space station, the American astronauts who shuttled their way into orbit, the Chinese astronauts living in space right now, all of the people who have flown commercial—have spoken about the transformational wonder of seeing Earth from space, a phenomenon known as the overview effect . They reported that they better understood the reality of our beautiful, fragile planet, and that they felt a duty to share their impressions with people on the ground. Gene Cernan, one of the dozen men who walked on the lunar surface, once said, “If only everyone could relate to the beauty and the purposefulness of it … It wouldn’t bring a utopia to this planet for people to understand it all, but it might make a difference.” In this sense, for a space traveler to remain unknown forever would be a sort of anti–overview effect: Just as they may have the right to request some privacy, they have no obligation to bring the transcendent power of their journey back to Earth.

Three years ago, two NASA astronauts made a historic flight on a new SpaceX astronaut capsule. Ahead of the mission, I asked NASA what Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken were going to have for breakfast on the morning of the launch. It was a question with a long tradition in spacefaring history: During the Apollo days, the public was privy to the final Earth-bound meals of history-making astronauts. NASA officials balked, saying they couldn’t divulge that information for privacy reasons. But on the day of the launch, Hurley, as if to sate the space press corps, posted a picture of his steak and eggs on Twitter (as it was still known then).

Hurley and Behnken’s preflight hours seemed like fair game; after all, these men were government employees, doing their job on their assigned mission. But future passengers may decide that we have no business knowing their breakfast order—or even their name.

NASA’s attempt to bring home part of Mars is unprecedented. The mission’s problems are not

Illustration shows a concept for multiple robots that would team up to bring home to Earth samples from Mars

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Massive cost overruns. Key deadlines slipping out of reach. Problems of unprecedented complexity, and a generation’s worth of scientific progress contingent upon solving them.

That’s the current state of Mars Sample Return, the ambitious yet imperiled NASA mission whose rapidly ballooning budget has cost jobs at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge and drawn threats of cancellation from lawmakers.

But not all that long ago, those same dire circumstances described the James Webb Space Telescope, the pioneering infrared scope that launched on Christmas Day 2021.

The biggest space telescope ever has so far proved to be a scientific and public relations victory for NASA. The telescope’s performance has surpassed all expectations, senior project scientist Jane Rigby said at a meeting recently.

Its first images were so hotly anticipated that the White House scooped NASA’s announcement, releasing a dazzling view of thousands of galaxies the day before the space agency shared the first batch of pictures . Thousands of researchers have since applied for observation time.

“The world has been rooting for this telescope to succeed,” Rigby told the National Academies’ committee on astronomy and astrophysics.

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Yet in the years before launch, the success and acclaim Webb now enjoys was far from guaranteed.

The telescope cost twice as much as initially anticipated and launched seven years behind its original schedule. Some members of Congress at one point tried to pull funding from the project. Even the journal Nature referred to it at the time as the “telescope that ate astronomy.”

After a thorough assessment of the project’s needs and flaws, NASA was able to turn the troubled venture around. Supporters of Mars Sample Return are hopeful that mission will follow a similar trajectory.

“A lot of great science will come out of” Mars Sample Return, said Garth Illingworth , an astronomer emeritus at US Santa Cruz and former deputy director of the project that is now the James Webb Space Telescope. “But they’ve got to get real as to how to manage this.”

Last year was a crisis point for Mars Sample Return, whose goal is to fetch rocks from the Red Planet’s Jezero crater and bring them back to Earth for study.

In July, the U.S. Senate presented NASA with an ultimatum in its proposed budget : Either present a plan for completing the mission within the $5.3 billion budgeted, or risk cancellation. A sobering independent review found in September that there was “near zero probability” of Mars Sample Return making its proposed 2028 launch date, and “no credible” way to fulfill the mission within its current budget. NASA is due to respond to that report this month.

A series of images shows tubes holding samples of rock cores and regolith collected by NASA's Perseverance rover.

The James Webb Space Telescope was further along in its development journey when it reached a similar crossroads in 2010, six years after construction began. Frustrated with the ballooning budget and constantly postponed launch date, the U.S. House of Representatives included no funding for the telescope in its proposed budget, which would have ended the project had the Senate agreed.

In a statement, lawmakers castigated the mission as “billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management,” foreshadowing the criticisms that would be leveled at Mars Sample Return more than a decade later.

To forestall cancellation, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) ordered an independent review of the project, which was under construction in her state.

The board determined that Webb’s problems stemmed from a “badly flawed” initial budget. All the technical expertise needed to complete this ambitious project was there, the evaluators concluded. But getting it done with the amount of money currently set aside would be virtually impossible.

Illingworth remembered that review when he read the Mars Sample Return assessment , which offered a similarly stark conclusion.

“Some of the words are very familiar,” he said with a chuckle.

When the Mikulski review came out in 2010, Illingworth was deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, which now leads science and operations for the James Webb Space Telescope.

An enormous mosaic of Stephan's Quintet of galaxies, as pictured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

He was sympathetic to the challenges facing Mars Sample Return managers, though chagrined that the James Webb Space Telescope’s hard-earned lessons have apparently faded so quickly — especially the importance of having a realistic budget from the beginning.

NASA missions are managed by very smart people with established histories of doing very hard things. How does something as terrestrially mundane as budgeting continually trip them up?

“The problem is that the models that you have as a cost estimator — and they have very complex proprietary software models that attempt to understand these types of things — are all built on things that have happened , in the past tense,” said Casey Dreier , chief of space policy for the Planetary Society.

“By definition, when you’re trying something completely new, it’s very hard to estimate in advance how much something unprecedented will cost,” Dreier said. “That happened for Apollo, that happened for the space shuttle, it happened for James Webb, and it’s happening now for Mars Sample Return.”

Mars Sample Return also has some mission-specific challenges that Webb didn’t have to contend with. For one, it’s happening at the same time as Artemis, NASA’s wildly expensive mission to return people to the moon .

Expected to cost $93 billion through 2025, Artemis got a 27% increase in its budget over the previous year, while Mars Sample Return’s guaranteed funding is 63% less than last year’s spend.

And while NASA’s ambitions are growing, its funding from Congress, adjusted for inflation, has been essentially flat for decades. That leaves little room for unexpected extras.

“We are tasking the space agency with the most ambitious slate of programs in space since the Apollo era, but instead of Apollo-era budgets, it has one-third of 1% of U.S. spending to work with,” Dreier said. “If you stumble right now, the wolves will come for you. And that’s what is happening to Mars Sample Return.”

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Not all ambitious scientific endeavors survive the kind of scrutiny the sample return is facing. In 1993 Congress canceled the U.S. Department of Energy’s Superconducting Super Collider, an underground particle accelerator, citing concerns about rising costs and fiscal mismanagement. The government had already spent $2 billion on the project and dug 14 miles of tunnel.

But in the same week that Congress ended the supercollider, it agreed — by a margin of a single vote — to continue funding the International Space Station, a similarly expensive project whose cost overruns had been widely criticized. ISS launched in November 1998 and is still going strong. (For now, anyway — NASA will intentionally crash it into the sea in 2030.)

The space station’s future was never seriously threatened again after that painfully close vote, just as Webb’s future was never seriously questioned after the 2010 cancellation threat.

JPL, the institution managing Mars Sample Return, has already paid dearly for the mission’s initial stumbles, laying off more than 600 employees and 40 contractors after NASA ordered it to reduce its spending.

But projects that survive this kind of reckoning often emerge “stronger and more resilient,” Dreier said. “They know the eyes of the nation and NASA and Congress are on them, so you have to perform.”

NASA is set to reveal this month how it plans to move forward with Mars Sample Return. Those familiar with the mission say they believe it can still happen — and that it’s still worth doing.

“Do I have faith in NASA, JPL, all of those involved to be able to deliver on the Mars Sample Return mission with the attention and technical integrity that it requires? Absolutely,” said Orlando Figueroa, chair of the the mission’s independent review team and NASA’s former “Mars Czar.”

“It will require very difficult decisions and levels of commitment, including from Congress, NASA and the administration, [and] a recognition of the importance, just like was the case with James Webb, for what this mission means for space science.”

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nasa on space tourism

Corinne Purtill is a science and medicine reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Her writing on science and human behavior has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Time Magazine, the BBC, Quartz and elsewhere. Before joining The Times, she worked as the senior London correspondent for GlobalPost (now PRI) and as a reporter and assignment editor at the Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh. She is a native of Southern California and a graduate of Stanford University.

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Voyager 1, First Craft in Interstellar Space, May Have Gone Dark

The 46-year-old probe, which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth and inspired earthlings with images of the planet as a “Pale Blue Dot,” hasn’t sent usable data from interstellar space in months.

nasa on space tourism

By Orlando Mayorquin

When Voyager 1 launched in 1977, scientists hoped it could do what it was built to do and take up-close images of Jupiter and Saturn. It did that — and much more.

Voyager 1 discovered active volcanoes, moons and planetary rings, proving along the way that Earth and all of humanity could be squished into a single pixel in a photograph, a “ pale blue dot, ” as the astronomer Carl Sagan called it. It stretched a four-year mission into the present day, embarking on the deepest journey ever into space.

Now, it may have bid its final farewell to that faraway dot.

Voyager 1 , the farthest man-made object in space, hasn’t sent coherent data to Earth since November. NASA has been trying to diagnose what the Voyager mission’s project manager, Suzanne Dodd, called the “most serious issue” the robotic probe has faced since she took the job in 2010.

The spacecraft encountered a glitch in one of its computers that has eliminated its ability to send engineering and science data back to Earth.

The loss of Voyager 1 would cap decades of scientific breakthroughs and signal the beginning of the end for a mission that has given shape to humanity’s most distant ambition and inspired generations to look to the skies.

“Scientifically, it’s a big loss,” Ms. Dodd said. “I think — emotionally — it’s maybe even a bigger loss.”

Voyager 1 is one half of the Voyager mission. It has a twin spacecraft, Voyager 2.

Launched in 1977, they were primarily built for a four-year trip to Jupiter and Saturn , expanding on earlier flybys by the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes.

The Voyager mission capitalized on a rare alignment of the outer planets — once every 175 years — allowing the probes to visit all four.

Using the gravity of each planet, the Voyager spacecraft could swing onto the next, according to NASA .

The mission to Jupiter and Saturn was a success.

The 1980s flybys yielded several new discoveries, including new insights about the so-called great red spot on Jupiter, the rings around Saturn and the many moons of each planet.

Voyager 2 also explored Uranus and Neptune , becoming in 1989 the only spacecraft to explore all four outer planets.

nasa on space tourism

Voyager 1, meanwhile, had set a course for deep space, using its camera to photograph the planets it was leaving behind along the way. Voyager 2 would later begin its own trek into deep space.

“Anybody who is interested in space is interested in the things Voyager discovered about the outer planets and their moons,” said Kate Howells, the public education specialist at the Planetary Society, an organization co-founded by Dr. Sagan to promote space exploration.

“But I think the pale blue dot was one of those things that was sort of more poetic and touching,” she added.

On Valentine’s Day 1990, Voyager 1, darting 3.7 billion miles away from the sun toward the outer reaches of the solar system, turned around and snapped a photo of Earth that Dr. Sagan and others understood to be a humbling self-portrait of humanity.

“It’s known the world over, and it does connect humanity to the stars,” Ms. Dodd said of the mission.

She added: “I’ve had many, many many people come up to me and say: ‘Wow, I love Voyager. It’s what got me excited about space. It’s what got me thinking about our place here on Earth and what that means.’”

Ms. Howells, 35, counts herself among those people.

About 10 years ago, to celebrate the beginning of her space career, Ms. Howells spent her first paycheck from the Planetary Society to get a Voyager tattoo.

Though spacecraft “all kind of look the same,” she said, more people recognize the tattoo than she anticipated.

“I think that speaks to how famous Voyager is,” she said.

The Voyagers made their mark on popular culture , inspiring a highly intelligent “Voyager 6” in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and references on “The X Files” and “The West Wing.”

Even as more advanced probes were launched from Earth, Voyager 1 continued to reliably enrich our understanding of space.

In 2012, it became the first man-made object to exit the heliosphere, the space around the solar system directly influenced by the sun. There is a technical debate among scientists around whether Voyager 1 has actually left the solar system, but, nonetheless, it became interstellar — traversing the space between stars.

That charted a new path for heliophysics, which looks at how the sun influences the space around it. In 2018, Voyager 2 followed its twin between the stars.

Before Voyager 1, scientific data on the sun’s gases and material came only from within the heliosphere’s confines, according to Dr. Jamie Rankin, Voyager’s deputy project scientist.

“And so now we can for the first time kind of connect the inside-out view from the outside-in,” Dr. Rankin said, “That’s a big part of it,” she added. “But the other half is simply that a lot of this material can’t be measured any other way than sending a spacecraft out there.”

Voyager 1 and 2 are the only such spacecraft. Before it went offline, Voyager 1 had been studying an anomalous disturbance in the magnetic field and plasma particles in interstellar space.

“Nothing else is getting launched to go out there,” Ms. Dodd said. “So that’s why we’re spending the time and being careful about trying to recover this spacecraft — because the science is so valuable.”

But recovery means getting under the hood of an aging spacecraft more than 15 billion miles away, equipped with the technology of yesteryear. It takes 45 hours to exchange information with the craft.

It has been repeated over the years that a smartphone has hundreds of thousands of times Voyager 1’s memory — and that the radio transmitter emits as many watts as a refrigerator lightbulb.

“There was one analogy given that is it’s like trying to figure out where your cursor is on your laptop screen when your laptop screen doesn’t work,” Ms. Dodd said.

Her team is still holding out hope, she said, especially as the tantalizing 50th launch anniversary in 2027 approaches. Voyager 1 has survived glitches before, though none as serious.

Voyager 2 is still operational, but aging. It has faced its own technical difficulties too.

NASA had already estimated that the nuclear-powered generators of both spacecrafts would likely die around 2025.

Even if the Voyager interstellar mission is near its end, the voyage still has far to go.

Voyager 1 and its twin, each 40,000 years away from the next closest star, will arguably remain on an indefinite mission.

“If Voyager should sometime in its distant future encounter beings from some other civilization in space, it bears a message,” Dr. Sagan said in a 1980 interview .

Each spacecraft carries a gold-plated phonograph record loaded with an array of sound recordings and images representing humanity’s richness, its diverse cultures and life on Earth.

“A gift across the cosmic ocean from one island of civilization to another,” Dr. Sagan said.

Orlando Mayorquin is a general assignment and breaking news reporter based in New York. More about Orlando Mayorquin

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2024 Total Solar Eclipse Join NASA experts on April 8, 2024, for a broadcast of the total solar eclipse. Want to see more? Tune in to the streams below for telescope live feeds of the total solar eclipse across the path, a broadcast in Spanish, and a live stream of sounding rockets launching during the eclipse.

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IMAGES

  1. How to watch NASA’s first space tourism launch to the ISS

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  2. These New NASA Posters Will Make You Want to Go to Mars

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  3. 14 Awesome Space Tourism Travel Posters from NASA (Gallery)

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  4. 15 Incredible Space Tourism Options Coming Soon (5 Destinations Already

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  5. White space satellite, The Aurora Space Station, Space Tourism, 4k HD

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  6. NASA Just Released Posters for Space Tourism

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COMMENTS

  1. Space Travel Technology

    Space Travel. The path to the Moon, Mars, and beyond requires technologies to get us where we need to go quickly, safely and efficiently. Space travel includes launch and in-space propulsion systems, cryogenic fluid management, and thermal management, as well as navigation and landing systems to get our supplies, equipment, and robotic or human ...

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    Article. NASA Seeks Students to Imagine Nuclear-Powered Space Missions. 1 min read. The third Power to Explore Student Challenge from NASA is underway. The writing challenge invites K-12 students in the United…. Article. NASA Improves GIANT Optical Navigation Technology for Future Missions. 4 min read.

  3. How will NASA keep up with space tourism?

    An official space tourism department could help prevent private rocket riders from clashing with working astronauts. NASA is making some changes for private space flights after the Axiom Space ...

  4. Exotic Cosmic Locales Available as Space Tourism Posters

    New travel posters from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, envision a day when the creativity of scientists and engineers will allow us to do things we can only dream of now. You can take a virtual trip to 14 alien worlds, and maybe even plaster your living room with planetary art, via the new, futuristic space tourism posters.

  5. How Space Tourism Is Skyrocketing

    Jason Lyon. By Debra Kamin. May 7, 2022. Ilida Alvarez has dreamed of traveling to space since she was a child. But Ms. Alvarez, a legal-mediation firm owner, is afraid of flying, and she isn't ...

  6. Axiom-1 Launch Updates: Highlights From SpaceX and NASA's First Private

    The mission, known as Axiom-1, represents NASA's first foray into space tourism aboard the orbital outpost. The crew, whose trip was booked through the company Axiom Space, will spend 10 days in ...

  7. Space Tourism: Then and Now

    Dennis Tito wore this suit when he launched to the International Space Station on April 28, 2001. (Smithsonian Institution) Although space itself remained inaccessible to private citizens until the 21st century, other places where Earth and space meet—such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) centers—have long been popular destinations for a different kind of space tourist.

  8. SpaceX will launch four space tourists on a three-day trip in space

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  9. NASA's plans for space tourism are becoming a reality

    Back in 2019, NASA's CFO Jeff DeWit estimated that space tourists could expect to pay companies like SpaceX $58 million just for transportation to the ISS. They'd then have to pay NASA another $35,000 for each day they spend on board the space station — stay the whole 30 days, and that's more than $1 million. That'll likely put a trip ...

  10. 2021 Was the Year Space Tourism Opened Up. But for Whom?

    Virgin Galactic announced on November 24 that Keisha Schahaff, a health and energy coach in Antigua, won two seats in a sweepstakes that raised $1.7 million for Space for Humanity, a Denver-based ...

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    This week, researchers are meeting at a virtual conference for the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program to brainstorm and investigate sci-fi-like ideas, some of which may very well ...

  13. NASA's First Space Tourism Mission Scheduled to Launch on April 3

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  17. Space tourism

    UniGalactic Space Travel Magazine is a bi-monthly educational publication covering space tourism and space exploration developments in companies like SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, Virgin Galactic and organizations like NASA. Classes in space tourism are currently taught at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, and Keio University in Japan.

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  20. Voyager 1, First Craft in Interstellar Space, May Have Gone Dark

    Astronomers say it's expected to put on another show in the coming months. Voyager 1, the 46-year-old first craft in interstellar space which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth, may have ...

  21. NASA Visitor Centers

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  22. 2024 Total Solar Eclipse Broadcast

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