SpaceX to announce who will be first-ever private citizen to travel to moon

HAWTHORNE, Calif. (KABC) -- SpaceX on Monday will announce its next step toward making space travel available to everyone. It will reveal who will be the very first private citizen to travel to the moon.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has long talked about his ultimate goal of colonizing Mars, and this would be the first step.

At 6 p.m. in Hawthorne, SpaceX will announce who it's sending as the first private passenger around the moon and when the trip will happen.

Musk tweeted a photo overnight of what appears to be the Big Falcon Rocket, which is still in development. It is the rocket that will take the unidentified passenger into a lunar orbit.

Musk may have also already given a clue as to who the passenger is. When someone tweeted Musk asking if he was the passenger, Musk responded by tweeting an emoji of the Japanese flag.

The trip is also strictly a fly-by, meaning no landing on the moon.

Last year, Musk announced plans to send two people on a weeklong mission to the moon and said the passengers had already paid a significant deposit. The names of those two people were never revealed.