Dennis Anthony Tito is an American engineer and entrepreneur. In mid-2001, he became the first space tourist to fund his own trip into space, when he spent nearly eight days in orbit as a crew member of ISS EP-1, a visiting mission to the International Space Station. This mission was launched by the spacecraft Soyuz TM-32, and was landed by Soyuz TM-31.
Dennis Tito
Crew of Soyuz TM-32. (L-R: Tito, Talgat Musabayev, and Yuri Baturin)
Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. Tourists are motivated by the possibility of viewing Earth from space, feeling weightlessness, experiencing extremely high speed and something unusual, and contributing to science.
Soyuz MS-20 crew on the International Space Station, from left to right: Yusaku Maezawa (space tourist), Alexander Misurkin (cosmonaut), and Yozo Hirano (space tourist).
The first space tourist, Dennis Tito (left) aboard the ISS
Space tourist Mark Shuttleworth
Artist conception of a Mars tourism poster, made by SpaceX