Orbital spaceflight broker Space Adventures announced that Dr. Charles Simonyi, the fifth paid spaceflight participant, will be returning to the International Space Station, making him their first customer to take a second trip.

According to an article in Wired.com, Daisuke Enomoto has filed a lawsuit against Space Adventures.

The first symposium on Personal Access to Space held by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) in Arcachon, France, May 28-30, 2008, was a mixture of both the encouraging and the discouraging.

Eric Anderson, CEO and president of Space Adventures, announced at a press conference today that Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, the world’s premier Internet search engine, will be Space Adventures’ next paying spaceflight participant.

Askmen.com has kindly given us permission to quote their article, “Five Things You Didn’t Know: Space Tourism.”

Although it costs over $20 million to visit the International Space Station, you don't need to be a billionaire to experience space tourism. There are a range of activities for a range of budgets, and they span in cost from as little as $12 up to $200,000. They might not be as fabulous as going to space, but at least they’re easier on the wallet.

Greg Olsen was the third private citizen to orbit the earth on the International Space Station ( ISS). After training for five months (900 hours) at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow, he launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the Soyuz TMA-7, on October 1, 2006, with cosmonaut Valeri Tokarev and astronaut Bill McArthur (Expedition 12). He then docked to the ISS on October 3 and returned to earth on Soyuz TMA-6 on October 11 with Cosmonaut Sergei Krikatev and Astronaut John Phillips (Expedition 11).

Right now, there are two types of people who go to space, astronauts and tourists. They're easily differentiated in one respect: tourists pay for their journey. But when you consider how hard these tourists have to work before merely setting foot on the International Space Station ( ISS), you realize the word “tourist” is an oversimplification of the process that these adventurers currently undergo.

According to an article in The China Post Roskosmos chairman Anatoly Perminov says Russia will be halting their space tourism programme after 2010. Because of the expansion of the International Space Station ( ISS), the seats available for tourists will go to permanent crew.

Richard Garriot will be boarding the International Space Station in October after spending months in training, as well as millions of dollars.