British singer Sarah Brightman is expected to blast off in October for a 10-day stay on the International Space Station, NASA said on Thursday.
The famed soprano, who starred in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera will pay about $52 million for a round-trip ride aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule, said U.S.-based Space Adventures, the firm that is arranging the trip.
Brightman will become the eighth tourist and first professional singer to visit the orbital outpost, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 418 km above Earth. One tourist, Microsoft co-founder Charles Simonyi, made two trips.
Since NASA retired its space shuttles in 2011, Russian Soyuz capsules have been fully booked flying crew to and from the station, a project of 15 nations. The last tourist to fly was Cirque du Soleil, founder Guy Laliberte, who spent 11 days aboard the station in 2009, at a cost of about $35 million.
