MOSCOW, April 26. /TASS/. Potential space tourists for flying on the Soyuz spacecraft have not been selected yet, the press service of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos told TASS on Friday.
Roscosmos and US company Space Adventures earlier signed a contract on sending tourists to space.
"Candidates for the flight in the framework of this contract have not been selected yet. We are currently working on contracts on building a spacecraft, and two places have already been reserved there," the press service said.
The Soyuz manned spacecraft for space tourism will be built in the second half of 2021. The space tourism flight will thus take place no earlier than at the end of 2022. Roscosmos said that space tourists will be able to familiarize themselves with the spacecraft during trainings at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center before the flight.
Roscosmos earlier told TASS that it signed a contract on sending two tourists to the International Space Station (ISS). The space corportation noted that "construction of a manned Soyuz MS spacecraft and Soyuz-2 carrier rocket has already started." Construction works are financed by space tourists themselves.