Space tourism will soon be a reality with the announcement of the Virginia-based Space Adventure of their plans to offer trips around the moon to space tourists five years from now.

Space Adventure, a private space exploration company, expects to begin launching their trips around the moon in February 2017, which is the 50th anniversary of the start of the Apollo program.

For a price of P150 million, a space tourist would be launched into space aboard a three-seat Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The vehicle would then rendezvous with an unmanned rocket that would take the spacecraft to the moon and encircle the moon at an altitude of 62 miles.

Space Adventure has reportedly sold one of the two tickets available, and is negotiating with the second space tourist.

A number of startup companies have sprung up in recent years, hoping to create a space tourism industry. However, orbital space tourism opportunities have been limited and expensive.

Some space tourists have signed contracts with third parties to conduct certain research activities while in orbit.

Several private space explorers had already reached the International Space Station. Space Adventures had facilitated the flights for all of the world's first private space explorers.

In 2001, Dennis Tito an American businessman and former JPL scientist,became the first "fee-paying" space tourist when he visited the International Space Station (ISS) for seven days.

In 2002, South African computer millionaire Mark Shuttleworth became the second space tourist to the ISS. The third was Gregory Olsen in 2005, who was trained as a scientist and whose company produced specialist high-sensitivity cameras. Olsen had planned to use his time on the ISS to conduct a number of experiments, in part to test his company's products.