 At 1.27pm Pacific time on the 27th of February 2017, SpaceX announced that they would be sending two private citizens to the moon and back by the end of next year. What a time to be alive. And this is your space pod for the 28th of February 2017. This whole event started after a cryptic tweet from Elon Musk at 5pm on Sunday the 26th of February stating that SpaceX would have an announcement at 1pm Pacific time the following day. Many people started to speculate about what this announcement would be, theorising it might have to do with SpaceX's spacesuits for their Crew Dragon to counter the recent release from Boeing of images of their spacesuits for their CST-100 Starliner. Others speculated that it would be a date confirmation for the first flight of Falcon 9. Or maybe the first reused Falcon 9 booster flight. And in the usual Elon fashion, 1pm came and went and there was no news. The reliable space journalist Jeff Faust was one of the first to break the news via Twitter. He'd been listening in on a media teleconference. A statement was released on the SpaceX website. It said the plan was to launch two humans around the moon in a free return trajectory, landing they won't land on the surface. They are targeting a launch date of the last quarter of 2018. The web post stated that this mission won't launch until Crew Dragon has successfully started delivering astronauts to the International Space Station first. But the question that's on everyone's mind is who's going? Well speculation is rife but a few potential names have been mentioned. Flight director James Cameron has previously expressed interest in going to the moon on a board of Russian Soyuz. But this has never officially been set in stone. Maybe it's Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Or maybe it's US President Donald Trump. Until the names are announced we just don't know. According to Jeff Faust, Elon has stated that the price will be in the ballpark of what it costs to send an astronaut to the International Space Station. After upwards of $30 million or more. So it has to be someone that has that kind of money. Which unfortunately isn't me. While I'm really really excited about this announcement, so many things have to fall into place before this historic mission can occur. Falcon Heavy, the vehicle that will be launching this mission, is yet to have its first test flight. The Crew Dragon capsule is also yet to fly and will have to send astronauts to the space station first before this mission. We'll also need to get more information about SpaceX's spacesuits too. All of these things need to happen without significant delays before this mission, which people are now calling Grey Dragon, can even launch. There's also the issue of Launchpad 39A, which is where this mission will be launching from. It's only just recently come back online. So anything that's not listed on the SpaceX website or through reputable sources like journalist Jeff Faust is simply just speculation. And speculation usually doesn't help. But it can be fun. Something interesting to consider is the recent NASA announcement that the Space Launch System, or SLS, First Mission, Exploration Mission 1, will possibly carry astronauts on board. It was originally scheduled to be an uncrewed test flight. So I wonder if the timing of these two announcements is related. Let me know what you think in the comments below or via social media. And of course, this video would not be possible without the generous support of our crowdfunding Patreon patrons. Without their generosity, we would not be 100% crowdfunded. So thank you so much, so, so much to our Patreon founders, architects, ambassadors, engineers and dreamers of tomorrow for all of your support. We could not do this without you. So thank you. My name is Lisa Stajinowski and whether you're moon first or Mars first. Until next time, keep on discovering.