MOSCOW, January 12. /TASS/. British singer Sarah Brightman who is set to go into orbit in 2015 will start her training in Russia's Star City space training facility on Thursday, January 15.
"She will arrive here on Wednesday, January 14, and will start her training the following day," the press service of the space training facility told TASS.
Brightman's flight is scheduled for September 1-11, 2015. She is expected to spend 10 days at the International Space Station (ISS).
Brightman, who starred in Andrew Lloyd Webber's “Phantom of the Opera” and is the world’s best-selling soprano singer with over 30 million of CDs sold, first announced her intentions to travel to the ISS as a space tourist in August 2012.
Expedition 45/46 crew members will include Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov and European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen.
The press service of the training facility said a 51-year-old Japanese businessman Satoshi Takamatsu, who has been selected as backup for Brightman, is due to come to Moscow on Wednesday and arrive in the Star City on Thursday together with the singer.
Takamatsu is the president of the newly created Space Travel company. He has already undergone medical tests and training at the Russian space agency, Roscosmos. The businessman is expected to be trained at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The pioneer space tourist is US entrepreneur Dennis Tito, who made the flight to the ISS in 2001 for $20 million and spent eight days at the station. The most recent space tourist at the station is Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberte, who spent 11 days at the ISS in 2009 for $40 million.
The only female space tourist so far reaching the ISS is Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-American engineer and co-founder and chairwoman of Prodea Systems. Her 12-day stay at the space station in 2006 cost her $20 million.