The first man ever to travel the space as a tourist is back with another plan for a space tour. This time he eyes the red planet ‘Mars’. The American multi-millionaire and space travel enthusiast, Dennis Tito is chalking out his privately funded round trip to Mars. The trip is planned to span over 501 days in the year 2018.

Dennis Tito had made a historical record in 2001, when he spent a grand total of $20 million for an eight-day trip to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket.

He is also leading the ‘Inspiration Mars Foundation’, a nonprofit organization, through which he plans to conduct a news conference to announce the tour to be launched in January 2018. The officials of ‘Inspiration Mars Foundation’ expressed, “This ‘Mission for America’ will generate new knowledge, experience and momentum for the next great era of space exploration”.

According to the NewSpace Journal, the documents of the plan read that the tour will be “a crewed free-return Mars mission that would fly by Mars, but not go into the orbit around the planet or land on it. This trip would launch using a modified SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket.” The Journal also writes: “According to the paper, existing environmental control and life support system technologies would allow such a spacecraft to support two people for the mission, although in Spartan condition.”

We wish Dennis Tito a good luck on his endeavor and hope the inspiration to travel and face adventure head-on, keeps spreading.