Software billionaire Charles Simonyi, the former chief architect of Microsoft who helped develop Excel and Word, is headed back to space. Space Adventures, a space tourism company based in Virginia, says Simonyi will travel to space next year on a Russian rocket–making him the first private traveler to make two trips.

Simonyi spent $25 million on a 13-day trip in April, 2007; the cost of this trip has not been disclosed.

Andy interviewed Simonyi about the future of software development at at last year’s MIT Technology Review EmTech conference. I re-posted the interview here.

Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer