Stay on space station for £27,000 a night

SPACE tourists will be able to pay £27,000 a night to stay on the International Space Station from next year, Nasa have announced.

A month-long holiday into orbit, with rocket travel included will cost nearly $60million (£47million).

The space agency also announced private companies would be allowed to use the orbiting platform for business ventures including filming television advertisements, and using Nasa astronauts to market their products.

It is part of Nasa’s attempt to recoup some of the cost of the space station as it begins to focus on the expensive project of returning humans to the Moon.

It will charge tourists tens of thousands of dollars per night for lodging, food, water, and use of life support systems on the space station.

Jim Dewit, the agency’s chief financial officer, said: “If you look at the pricing and you add it up, back of a napkin, it would be roughly $35,000 a night, per astronaut. But it won’t come with any Hilton or Marriott points.”

The bulk of the monthly bill for would-be space tourists will be an estimated $58million for a return ticket on a space taxi.

That money will go to either Spacex or Boeing, both of which are developing vehicles to make the trip. Private astronauts will travel on Spacex’s Crew Dragon capsule, or Boeing’s Starliner.

Nasa said there would be up to two such trips a year, and stays would be for a maximum of 30 days. Up to a dozen private astronauts could go per year.

The agency made its announcement at the NASDAQ stock exchange in New York, where it announced it was “opening the space station for commercial business”.

Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator at Nasa, said it was unknown what the end result of the new “open for business” policy would be. He said: “We have no idea what kinds of creativity, and literally out of the world ideas, can come from private industry.”

Nasa has previously talked to private companies about taking over the entire operation of the costly space station, but none have wanted to.

It will not be the first time a space tourist has been to the station.

Roscosmos, Nasa’s Russian counterpart, has previously taken privately funded astronauts there.