Chinese space tourism startup eyes 2028 for 1st crewed mission, signs celebrity for future flight

A Chinese space firm is booking passengers for its suborbital tourism flights and has now signed up a celebrity for an early flight.

Commercial company InterstellOr unveiled a full-scale experimental version of its CYZ1 (ChuanYueZhe 1) crew capsule on Jan. 22, Asia Business Daily reported, and also performed a landing buffer test.

CYZ1 is designed to allow occupants to experience a few minutes of microgravity, taking passengers above the Kármán Line, an arbitrary boundary 62 miles (100 kilometers) above mean sea level that's commonly used to define where space begins.

The company is targeting its first crewed flights in 2028 and is already taking bookings, though timelines are dependent on development, testing and certification progresses. InterstellOr has, however, announced that the Chinese actor Johnny Huang Jingyu has signed up as its first celebrity space tourist and will fly as passenger 009, state media ECNS reported.

Initial tickets are reported to be around 3 million Chinese yuan, or US$430,000. A 10% deposit is needed to make a reservation. The company also previously announced that Lin Xiaoyan, a Chinese-American poet, is set to become the first overseas Chinese female astronaut.

The moves echo those of Western space tourism companies, particularly Blue Origin, which flies passengers on short trips to just above the Kármán Line with its New Shepard vehicle. Blue Origin has also flown a number of celebrities on its suborbital flights, including actor William Shatner, NFL legend Michael Strahan and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.

Beijing-based InterstellOr was founded in January 2023, with members of its core technical team having experience from China's state-led human spaceflight program, according to reports.

InterstellOr is not the only company aiming to bring suborbital tourism services to China. CAS Space, a spinoff from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is working on its own program, and earlier in January performed a first launch test of an uncrewed capsule for microgravity experiments. Another commercial firm, Deep Blue Aerospace, also has eyes on suborbital tourism using reusable rockets.