Science

3 people are going to the moon — here's how a private company will pull off the historic mission

Paul Szoldra

2016-02-03T04:08:46Z

Only 24 people in the history of Earth have made the 239,000-mile trip to the Moon, but a company based out of Virginia plans to change that.

With a Russian cosmonaut behind the controls, a company called Space Adventures hopes to fly two private citizens around the Moon and back by the end of the decade. Though it has shifted its timetable slightly from its original launch target of 2018, the company already has two passengers who reserved their seats for $150 million a piece.

"We've got a couple of clients under contract for our lunar mission," says Tom Shelley, the president of Space Adventures. "That's taking up the majority of our time, working with our partners in Russia."

Right now, Shelley says his company is working out all the logistics. But he did offer some details as to what his as-yet-unnamed clients will be doing on their trip.

Here's what the crew will experience aboard the first lunar mission in about 45 years.

Since launching businessman Dennis Tito up to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2001, Space Adventures has been the only company to send private citizens to space.

Dennis Tito return from space — American space tourist Dennis Tito, 60, gives the thumbs-up sign shortly after landing inside the Russian Soyuz space capsule May 6, 2001 near Arkalyk, Kazakhstan. Tito was returning from a six-day voyage to the International Space Station, a trip for which he paid $20 million. Getty Images

Other companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have big plans for private spaceflight, but Space Adventures has already pulled it off eight times using Russian-made equipment.

tracy caldwell space station cupola window iss

Now the company is working on going beyond the ISS — from the Earth to the moon.

The plan is fairly straightforward: Two passengers and a Russian cosmonaut will use a slightly-modified Soyuz capsule for a trip that will take them to the ISS, then eventually on to the Moon.

Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz TMA-19M — A Soyuz-FG rocket booster blasts off at the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. AP/Dmitry Lovetsky

The Soyuz modifications include the addition of a slightly larger heat shield, better communications system, and additional life support, since it will be on a longer flight than in the past.

Of course, before the civilian astronauts can go into space, they'll have to go through plenty of training in Star City, Russia, just like regular astronauts and cosmonauts do.

Soyuz TMA spacecraft mockup Star City, Russia

They'll learn the basic operations of the Soyuz, the different components of the module they'll live in for their flight to the Moon, emergency procedures, and train on mockups of the International Space Station.

soyuz training Star City, Russia — Cosmonaut Yuri I. Malenchenko (foreground) and astronaut Edward T. Lu , NASA ISS science officer and flight engineer, practice in a Soyuz capsule simulator as part of their training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. NASA

Once their training is complete, they'll launch from Russia with the ISS as their first stop.

Once making it into orbit, Soyuz would dock with the ISS and the crew would start to get acclimated to life in space.

The plan for the Space Adventures lunar mission is to stay there for about 10 days.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, a second launch will send up a Lunar Module to dock with the Soyuz. The module would have a larger living space and a rocket to blast it to the Moon.

Once everything is ready, the two civilian astronauts and Russian cosmonaut would get into the Soyuz, undock from the ISS, then rendezvous with the Lunar Module in low-Earth orbit.

After docking is complete, they would be "go" for the Moon mission.

It's a similar setup to one from July 1975, called the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, in which the US docked an Apollo Command/Service Module with a Soviet Soyuz 7K-TM spacecraft.

At this point, the Russian cosmonaut would fire the engines and blast off toward the Moon.

The mission would follow a similar path of NASA's Apollo 8: a December 1968 mission that was the first manned mission to go around the Moon.

After about three days of travel, the Moon will look a lot larger and clearer in the Soyuz windows.

The Soyuz will then get the same glimpse of the Moon the Apollo astronauts did, passing within 62 miles of the surface. "It’s going to swing by the moon," Shelley says.

They'll see awesome sites like this ...

... And this.

They'll pass the far side of the Moon that we never get to see from Earth.

As they swing back around, they'll witness an "Earthrise."

After the awe-inspiring sights and the inevitable Moon selfies are photographed, they'll head home on a free-return trajectory — a maneuver that "slingshots" the spacecraft around the Moon and back to Earth without needing to use its rocket.

Circumlunar free return trajectory — Sketch of a circumlunar free return trajectory. Wikimedia Commons

It'll take another three days to get back to Earth.

earth from space apollo 8 nasa — Earth from space as seen by Apollo 8 astronauts. NASA

They'll skip any stopovers at the ISS. The Russian cosmonaut will jettison the Lunar Module, then guide the small Soyuz capsule back to Earth.

Now crammed inside the Soyuz capsule, the three-man crew will strap in and prepare for reentry into Earth's atmosphere.

hadfield, romanesko and Marshburn in the Soyuz capsule

At 400,000 feet above the Earth, the atmosphere will start to heat Soyuz's outer surfaces as it travels at more than 500 mph.

Source: NASA

About 15 minutes before landing, the parachutes deploy to slow its descent to 16 miles per hour.

Soyuz TMA-14M capsule in sky iss — The Soyuz TMA-14M capsule with International Space Station (ISS) crew members Barry Wilmore of the U.S., Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova of Russia is seen above clouds as it descends beneath a parachute just before landing southeast of Dzhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan in this March 12, 2015 picture provided by NASA. REUTERS/Bill Ingalls/NASA/Handout via Reuters NASA/REUTERS

That's still a little bit too fast for a comfortable landing, though. So one second before touchdown, six small engines will fire from the capsule's bottom, slowing the spacecraft to a safe landing.

Soyuz_TMA 17_retro rockets_firing_during_landing

The capsule's heat shield will be burnt to a crisp.

But the Russian cosmonaut inside, and the first two civilians to travel around the Moon in history, should be just fine.

Space