Greg Olsen was the third private citizen to orbit the earth on the International Space Station (ISS). After training for five months at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow, he launched on a Russian Soyuz rocket TMA-7 on October 1, 2005 with Cosmonaut Valeri Tokarev and Astronaut Bill McArthur. He then docked to the ISS on October 3, and returned to earth on Soyuz TMA-6 on October 11 with Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and Astronaut John Phillips. He performed more than 150 orbits of the earth and logged almost 4 million miles of weightless travel during his 10 days in space.

Olsen is also an entrepreneur who developed two highly successful companies in the telecom/imaging industry.