Space tourism is set to get a very famous traveller as Google co-founder Sergey Brin puts in $5 million for a possible foray above the earth's atmosphere in 2011. Moreover, the nascent industry may also get its own dedicated vehicle as space tourism firm Space Adventures aims to move beyond contracted seats on planned Russian spaceflights.

Space Adventures, a Virginia company that arranges passage for wealthy explorers to ride on Russian Soyuz rockets to the International Space Station (ISS), plans to buy a Soyuz flight all its own in 2011, with the option of buying more.

Brin, one of the investors in this project, is likely to be one of the two occupants on the first such flight scheduled three years later. He made a $5 million investment in the company that will serve as a deposit on a future flight.

Brin, president of technology at Google and one of the youngest billionaires in the world today, said, ''I am a big believer in the exploration and commercial development of the space frontier, and am looking forward to the possibility of going into space.''

Google is also a sponsor of the Google Lunar X Prize, a $25 million competition to land an unmanned craft on the moon.

In the past, the Space Adventures spot was a spare seat on a Soyuz mission that was headed for the station anyway. For the private Soyuz mission, Space Adventures will book two seats on the three-seat spacecraft, with a Russian commander taking the other seat. The mission will be scheduled so as not to interfere with the official flights of astronauts to and from the station, the company said.

Eric Anderson, the chief executive of Space Adventures, said that the deal meant ''we become a space mission company, not simply a seller of seats.'' Future missions could take travelers to other destinations like privately run space stations, he said.

On 28 April 2001, Dennis Tito became the first "fee-paying" space tourist when he visited the ISS for seven days. South African computer millionaire Mark Shuttleworth followed him in 2002.

The third was Gregory Olsen in 2005, who was trained as a scientist and whose company produced specialist high-sensitivity cameras. Olsen planned to use his time on the ISS to conduct a number of experiments, in part to test his company's products. Olsen had planned an earlier flight, but had to cancel for health reasons.

After the Columbia disaster, space tourism on the Russian Soyuz programme was temporarily put on hold, because Soyuz vehicles became the only available transport to the ISS.

However, in 2006, space tourism was resumed. On 18 September 2006, Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian American (Soyuz TMA-9), became the first female space tourist and the fourth overall. On 7 April 2007, Charles Simonyi, an American billionaire of Hungarian descent, joined their ranks (Soyuz TMA-10). All of them were charged around $20 million each by Space Adventures.

Space Adventures, Ltd. is a space tourism company that provides access to space to private citizens. Eric C Anderson is the president and CEO of Space Adventures. He co-founded Space Adventures in 1998 with several other entrepreneurs from the aerospace, adventure travel and entertainment industries and has managed the company over the past several years, selling more than $120 million in space tourist flights.