New York (ECN) - Multimillionaire Charles Simonyi, one of the early software developers of Microsoft, will return to the International Space Station (ISS) in the spring of 2009, just two years after making his first trip.
The company Space Adventures, which is dedicated to conducting these flights of private space exploration, reported today that Simonyi will be part of the crew of the Soyuz TMA-14, which has a mission scheduled for next spring.
Simonyi will repeat this experience in a time shorter than many professional astronauts and hold the record for being the first "space tourist" who travels twice to space, something to which only a privileged few have access, costing some 25 million dollars.
Space has always captivated this executive of Hungarian origin, who joined Microsoft in 1981 and helped in the creation of programs such as Microsoft Word and Excel.
The next Space Adventures client is Richard Garriott, son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, whose trip is scheduled for Oct. 12.
