SpaceX BFR To Fly First ‘Private Passenger’ Around Moon Since Apollo 17

Over the past few years, SpaceX has grown into a prominent player in the field of spaceflight. The company has mastered the art of reusability and launched satellites for both private as well as government customers. However, these launches are just a part of a much grander mission, one that would lead to Moon and Mars.

When Elon Musk, who also owns electric car company Tesla, founded SpaceX in 2002, his prime goal was to colonize the red planet and make humans a multi-planetary species. To achieve the goal, the company launched its Falcon rocket and Dragon spacecraft, and started conducting space launches, while improving on the aspect of reusability. Now, all that effort is being utilized to develop a humongous rocket-spacecraft combo for Martian flights.

The spaceship, which was announced last year and is officially named Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), will fly a crew of humans to the red planet sometime around 2024. However, according to a recent set of updates posted by the company, the reusable vehicle will also be used to fly a private passenger on a round trip to Moon.

On Sept. 13, SpaceX made a Twitter announcement noting that a private passenger has been signed up to fly around the Moon on BFR, which is still in the development phase. The company has not revealed when this particular "Moon mission" would happen but has given a date when the exact details of the mission, including the name of the passenger, are likely to be revealed — Sept. 17.

As soon as SpaceX broke the news, many wondered if Musk himself would be flying on the Moon mission. The billionaire didn’t give an exact answer to that question but tweeted the flag of Japan in response to one of the users, something that indicates the passenger could be from the country. He even said the render of BFR featured in the SpaceX tweet is the latest representation of what the vehicle.

That said, regardless of who flies on the mission, a trip to the Moon would definitely be epic. In fact, it would be the first to the satellite since the last Apollo flight, where astronauts Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, and Ron Evans flew to the lunar orbit.

"Only 24 humans have been to the Moon in history," SpaceX stated in another Tweet. "No one has visited since the last Apollo mission in 1972."

The plan to fly around Moon was first pitched by SpaceX in 2017 when the company said a crew of two would be sent on round trips to the Moon using its Falcon Heavy vehicle and Crew Dragon spacecraft. The flight was slated to happen by the end of 2018 but was apparently scrubbed in favor of the BFR.

“We’re sort of debating whether to do that on Falcon Heavy or BFR,” Musk told The Verge before Falcon Heavy’s first flight in February. “It will sort of depend how well BFR development is going as to whether we focus on BFR for deep-space human flight or whether we do that on Falcon Heavy.”

The passenger to fly on the BFR Moon mission could be one of the two original passengers for the Falcon Heavy flight, but that still needs to be confirmed. The Sept. 17 event will begin at 9 p.m. EDT and SpaceX has already set up a live stream for it.