News

The First Space Hotel Is Set To Open In 2027

Published

5 years ago

March 10, 2021

the first space hotel is set to open in 2027

Orbital Assembly

While hotels in many countries around the world are still closed due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, space construction company Orbital Assembly Corporation has recently announced that its first space hotel, called Voyager Station, is set to open in 2027.

The idea for the Voyager Station dates back to 2012 and a Californian company called Gateway Foundation, which later established Orbital Assembly Corporation to realize its ambitious plan. First plans were introduced to the world in 2019, describing a futuristic rotating hotel inspired by sci-fi movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Orbital Assembly

Back then, the hotel was called Von Braun Rotating Space Station, but its name was later changed because the connection with the infamous Nazi regime aerospace engineer, Wernher Von Braun, caused unwanted controversy.

The latest design of the ambitious space hotel features 24 modules connected together by elevator shafts, offering over 11,600 square meters of habitable space for its 280 guests. The modules form a massive wheel that rotates around a central docking bay to create artificial gravity using centrifugal force.

Orbital Assembly

“The station rotates, pushing the contents of the station out to the perimeter of the station, much in the way that you can spin a bucket of water — the water pushes out into the bucket and stays in place,” explained Tim Alatorre, senior design architect at Orbital Assembly Corporation to CNN Travel.

Orbital Assembly

To keep everyone’s anxiety levels as low as possible, Voyager Station will have not only a bar, restaurant, gym, and other features expected in a luxury cruise ship but also 44 emergency return vehicles (ERVs) programmed to autonomously return back to Earth.

Also Read: Sightec Completes First Drone Delivery Without GPS

Orbital Assembly Corporation plans to position its first space hotel 500-550 kilometers above Earth’s surface in a sun-synchronous orbit, meaning it will always face the same position relative to the Sun. This is mainly to reduce thermal stress on key structural components.

Not much information on how much it will cost to book a room in the space hotel has been revealed so far, but it’s safe to assume that it will exceed the average person’s annual salary several times. Rumors suggest that a 4-day stay will set you back $5 million.

News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.