by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

For eight years, they thundered aloft in cramped Russian spacecraft from a former Soviet spaceport in Kazakhstan, battling bureaucracy and gravity to blaze a trail across the heavens and redefine what it meant to be a space traveler. No longer would access to orbit be limited to highly trained astronauts chosen on merit and working on behalf of their nations; instead, space would be open to any sufficiently healthy people with enough money and moxie to qualify.

A top Russian space official has warned not to expect a resumption of space tourist flights to the International Space Station any time soon. Russia’s Roscosmos state corporation has no plans to send space tourists to the country’s segment of the International Space Station (ISS) before 2020, Roscosmos deputy director general for international cooperation told Sputnik in an interview. “As for sending tourists to the Russian segment of the ISS, […]

New Shepard booster executes a controlled vertical landing at 4.2 mph. (Credit: Blue Origin)

With Blue Origin’s successful re-flight of its reusable New Shepard booster and capsule on Friday, the company jumped ahead in the competition to fly people into space on a commercial basis.

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This is a bit of a letdown, going from international recording star Sarah Brightman singing on orbit to Kazakhstan’s third ever space traveler: Kazakhstan’s third ever cosmonaut is set to replace would-be space tourist Sarah Brightman, a British singer who recently backed out of a $52 million seat aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft blasting off in September. Russian federal space agency Roscosmos confirmed on its official Twitter account Monday that Kazakh cosmonaut candidate Aidyn Aimbetov would […]

British soprano Sarah Brightman has dropped out of a planned trip this fall to the International Space Station citing ” for personal family reasons.” A post on the singer’s website did not elaborate on those reasons. The announcement comes only weeks after press reports said Brightman would be replaced by her backup, Japanese businessman Satoshi Takamatsu, because she would not be ready in time for the flight. Those reports were […]

2 Z G flights this week. The second was done in my space suit to get a feeling of wearing it during weightlessness! pic.twitter.com/dAbdC8vxZy — Sarah Brightman (@SarahBrightman) April 4, 2015   Such an incredible week! I did my first Zero Gravity flight and experienced weightlessness! So amazing! pic.twitter.com/G2O5SpctZO — Sarah Brightman (@SarahBrightman) April 3, 2015

Expedition 37 takes off for the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)

Faced with the loss of a NASA contract to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, Roscosmos plans to restart a program to fly tourists to the orbiting laboratory in 2018:

“We plan compensating for the fall of demand for manned spaceships of the Soyuz family after 2018 by resuming short-term commercial expeditions to the Russian segment of the ISS,” Izvestia daily quoted a quarterly report posted by Energiya space corporation, the federal agency’s main subsidiary in the field of manned orbital flights.

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Soprano Sarah Brightman has teamed up with ex-husband Andrew Lloyd Webber in an effort to develop  a song she can sing during her 10-day stay aboard the International Space Station in September. “I have been working on various things,” she said. “Finding a song that suits the idea of space and something that’s incredibly simple. “To sing in microgravity is very, very different thing to singing down here. Here, you […]

Sarah Brightman and crew mates undergo wilderness survival training. (Credit: Roscosmos)

MOSCOW (Roscosmos PR) — The autonomous training for surviving in a case of emergence landing in marshy-wooded area in the winter will take place since Jan 19 till Feb 9.

Crewmates of ISS crew 48/49: Anatoly Ivanishin (Roscosmos), Takuya Onishi (JAXA), Kathleen Rubins (NASA) and ISS crew 49/50: Sergey Ryzhikov & Andrey Borisenko( Roscosmos), Robert Kimbrough (NASA) and spaceflight participants Sarah Brightman and Satoshi Takamatsu take part in this training.

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British singer Sarah Brightman and backup Satoshi Takamatsu at as press conference in Moscow on Monday.