spacetoday.net: Report: Cirque du Soleil founder to fly to space

Posted: Wed, Jun 3, 2009, 7:43 AM ET (1143 GMT)
The founder of a flamboyant performance company is expected to be tapped Thursday to fly to the International Space Station as the first Canadian space tourist. Multiple reports, initially by NASA Watch, have identified Guy Laliberté as the person to be announced at a press conference Thursday jointly held in Montreal and Moscow. The 49-year-old Laliberté, who established Cirque du Soleil, has a net worth of $2.5 billion and reportedly on a business trip to Russia at the present time. The Canadian Space Agency announced Monday the press conference to announce a "Canadian entrepreneur" who would fly to space on the "first philanthropic mission to the International Space Station", without providing additional details. The flight would be on the next Soyuz taxi flight to the ISS, scheduled for the end of September; US company Space Adventures previously announced that a seat on that mission was potentially open to commercial customers after plans to fly a Kazakh cosmonaut fell through.