Daybreak on Mars' Gale Crater (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Creative Commons).

The Inspiration Mars Foundation was founded by millionaire Dennis Tito, the first paying space tourist who bought a flight to the International Space Station from the Russian space agency in 2001.

“It’s not a commercial mission, it’s a philanthropic mission,” Tito told ABC News.

From ABC: 

Tito, now 72, says he does not plan to fly himself, but he does plan to bankroll part of the mission himself. A former NASA engineer who went into finance to make his fortune, he says the flight would be possible because it would use privately designed spacecraft already in development -- perhaps a rocket and conical space capsule built by Elon Musk's SpaceX company, with an inflatable module made by Robert Bigelow's firm for extra room.

“It’s incredibly feasible. It’s not crazy talk," Taber MacCallum, CEO of Paragon Space Development Corp., told CNN.

MacCullum said a life support system would have to be developed and that the group is not asking NASA for funding. The mission could be accomplished for under $1 billion, he said.

MacCallum and Tito announced their plans at the National Press Club in Washington. 

Due to the length and danger of the mission, Inspiration Mars suggests the man and woman be a married couple. 

From CNN: 

Besides life support for the crew, one of the biggest challenges would be the return into the Earth's atmosphere. Heat shielding for a high speed re-entry hasn’t been tested. NASA isn’t even testing its new system on the Orion spacecraft until next year at the earliest. Orion is in development to take astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars.

And there’s also concern about radiation exposure. The man and woman whom MacCallum and Tito want to send would likely be a married couple. Because of the radiation risk, MacCallum said, they’d be older and “out of the childbearing years.”

According to ABC, Earth and Mars will align in 2018 in such a way that a round-trip could be made with relatively low fuel. The next opportunity wouldn’t be until 2031. 

Inspiration Mars is aiming for a departure date of Jan. 5, 2018, for the spacecraft to pass Mars on Aug. 20 and return to Earth on May 21, 2019. 

Reach Executive Producer Agnus Dei Farrant here.