Sarah Brightman has started training for her 10-day mission to the International Space Station in October.
The professional singer will train for nine months at Star City, the cosmonaut training facility right outside Moscow, Russia. NASA confirmed she spent $52 million for her ticket to space, according to The Guardian.
Brightman, best known for starring in Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera," will become the eighth tourist and first professional singer to travel into space. She has dreamed of traveling beyond Earth's atmosphere since she saw the first moon landing in 1969, according to her website.
"Throughout most of my life, I felt an incredible desire to take the journey to space," she said during her trip announcement in October 2012. "The opportunity to orbit the Earth, witnessing multiple sunrises and sunsets everyday, looking back to our small, blue life-sustaining jewel from a distance gives me the greatest sense of anticipation."
She will travel aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule to the space station that orbits about 260 miles above the atmosphere. Cosmonaut Sergey Volkov will pilot the spacecraft carrying Brightman and European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogenson. Space Adventures, a U.S.-based space tourism company, arranged the trip.
Brightman's training was delayed a week to give her time to recover from a cold, according to Russia's ITAR-TASS news service (via The Guardian). Japanese entrepreneur Satoshi Takamatsu also started training this week in case Brightman can't make her flight.
Her scheduled visit will follow the 11-day visit by Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte in 2009. His trip cost about $35 million.
Other travelers include Dennis Tito (the first private space explorer), Mark Shuttleworth, Gregory Olsen, Anousheh Ansari (the first woman), Charles Simonyi and Richard Garriott. Some have only participated in the training like Lance Bass.
