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(CNN) --
SpaceX announced Wednesday that it has booked another mission around the Moon for a wealthy thrill seeker in its upcoming Starship spacecraft.
Dennis Tito, an American millionaire who already paid for his trip to the International Space Station in 2001, and his wife, Akiko, plan to go on a lunar expedition that will last about a week, according to SpaceX.
American millionaire Dennis Tito celebrates after landing near the Kazakh city of Arkalyk after his journey as the world's first space tourist in 2001. Credit: Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images
The mission will come after SpaceX fulfills its commitment to launch billionaire payment processing CEO Jared Isaacman on the first commercial manned spaceflight mission on Starship, a rocket and spacecraft system still under development at the facility. of SpaceX in South Texas.
Starship is awaiting approval from federal regulators to conduct its first uncrewed orbital test flight.
SpaceX will also carry out its first trip around the Moon for billionaire fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa, a mission announced years ago, before Tito's trip, according to a press release.
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Tito said during a press conference Wednesday afternoon that the only difference between his mission and Maezawa's will be that he and his wife bought individual seats on the mission, while Maezawa bought an entire flight for himself and a group of artists. .
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"The mission is now open for 10 other people to sign up as well," Tito said.
He added that he doesn't expect this flight to launch in the near future, as he expects SpaceX to launch "hundreds" of flights, including uncrewed satellite launches, before he and his wife fly.
"This has been a long search, a dream of mine that started in 1958 when I started studying aeronautics and astronautics," said Tito.
"If I can show that a man in his 80s can do this, I hope that inspires people of any age... that this is possible."
Akiko Tito, who said she is an engineer, pilot and investor, added that she hopes this mission will help raise awareness of the new possibilities emerging in space travel.
Dennis Tito earned a master's degree in engineering science in 1964 and went on to work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, before leaving the financial industry job in 1972, according to his biography on the website. from the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
On Wednesday, he declined to share any financial information about the starship's upcoming mission.
Aarti Matthews, director of SpaceX's Starship crew and cargo programs, said booking private missions on the Starship is part of the company's goal to offer "airline-like" access to space.
Tito, 82, became the first person to pay for his trip to space 21 years ago, when he booked a trip with a company called Space Adventures.
That company booked a number of space trips by buying seats aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft in the early 2000s.
Now commercial space companies, including SpaceX, are seeking to continue those early days of space tourism by selling seats aboard newly developed, American-made spacecraft.
However, it is unclear when the first crewed spacecraft mission will take off.
That ship is expected to be the continuation of the capsule called Crew Dragon that SpaceX designed and built to transport NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
The company has already flown private customers, including Isaacman, into space aboard that vehicle.
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But the Starship is far bigger than anything SpaceX, or any other rocket developer, has ever built.
It is expected to have more thrust than NASA's Saturn V rocket, which powered the moon landings in the mid-20th century, and the space agency's new lunar rocket, called SLS, or Space Launch System.
The company has long touted that it has the vehicle that could one day put humans on Mars for the first time, and NASA has reserved the vehicle to return astronauts to the lunar surface later this decade.
However, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said he plans to conduct test launches and unmanned starship missions, using only satellites, before putting people on board.
Before that can happen, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which authorizes commercial rocket launches, must give the company its approval.
An FAA spokesman said the agency "will make a licensing determination only after SpaceX provides all outstanding information and the agency can fully analyze it," when contacted by email Wednesday morning.
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