First Spanish-born astronaut plans new space trip at age 63

THE FIRST Spanish-born astronaut is about to go up into space again – at the age of 62.

Miguel Eladio López-Alegría, who carried out three missions to NASA's Space Transport System (STS) and two in the Soyuz between 1995 and 2007, is now heading into the big starry mass in a very different capacity: As a tour guide.

He will be the professional commander on the Space X Crew Dragon, which will fly to the International Space Station (ISS) towards the end of 2021.

The trip, run by Axiom Space, will see three 'space tourists' head out into the Earth's orbit, to the 'floating' headquarters where Spain's current science minister, Pedro Duque, has been based several times.

Miguel López-Alegría retweeted the Axiom Space (@Axiom_Space) announcement, which read: “A multi-national crew composed of three private astronauts and @CommanderMLA have now officially signed with Axiom. In other words: The first private crew to go to orbit in human history – the crew of Ax-1 – has been assembled. Mission launches NET late 2021. More details soon.”

He captioned it: “I'm so grateful for this opportunity; we're going to have a #Blast!”

The three 'tourists', who have been given basic astronaut 'training' but who are not space professionals in any way, will be spending around on an orbital complex, experiencing micro-gravity, and catching views of the Earth unique to the ISS – including sunrises every half an hour, as Pedro Duque explained to school children last January, and even the giant tomato greenhouses in the province of Almería.

This will be the first time in history that anyone has been able to take a 'holiday' into space, but the identities of the three planning to do so have not been revealed – nor has the price tag.

Miguel will, in fact, be 63 when he joins them on the space trip; he is 62-and-a-half now.

He was born in Madrid, his father is from the western region of Extremadura – the city of Badajoz, close to the Portuguese border, of which his grandfather, Eladio López-Alegría, was mayor during Spain's Second Republic – and his mother is from the USA.

The family moved to Mission Viejo, California, when he was very young, and he grew up there before enlisting in the US Marines and graduating with a degree in systems engineering from the US Naval Academy in 1980, and qualifying as a combat pilot in 1981.

He went on to the US Naval Postgraduate School and completed a master's degree in aerospace engineering, and also a course for National and International Security Executives at the Harvard Kennedy.

Miguel's astronaut training began in 1992 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

As he grew up in the United States, it made sense for Miguel to become a US citizen, which meant he had to formally renounce his Spanish nationality.

But he is still half-Spanish by DNA, and Spanish-born.

More often known as 'Michael López-Alegría' in the English-speaking world, Miguel is fluent in French and Russian as well as his two native languages.