Japanese billionaire entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano will be the next tourists to travel to the International Space Station (ISS), Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said Thursday.

Maezawa and Hirano will travel aboard a Russian “Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft that is scheduled for launch on December 8, 2021 from the Baikonur cosmodrome” in Kazakhstan, the agency said in a statement.

Maezawa, 45, who made his fortune in online retail, also plans to participate in a 2023 mission around the moon aboard a Starship spacecraft of SpaceX, the Roscosmos rival of US billionaire Elon Musk

Maezawa and film producer Hirano, who will be documenting the mission, will begin pre-flight training in June at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, a closed town outside of Moscow, Roscosmos added.

It said that the flight will last 12 days and the crew will be led by Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin.

“I’m so curious ‘what’s life like in space?’ So, I am planning to find out on my own and share with the world on my YouTube channel,” Maezawa said, as quoted by Roscosmos.

It will be the first time that two of the three spots on a Soyuz space rocket will be occupied by tourists.

The last time Roscosmos took a tourist to the ISS was in 2009, with the flight of Canadian Guy Laliberte, co-founder of Cirque du Soleil. 

The resumption of these tourist flights comes as Roscosmos lost its monopoly for ferrying crews to the ISS after a reusable SpaceX rocket last year successfully delivered NASA astronauts to space.


You May Also Like

How Does the Cat’s Eye Nebula Sound Like? NASA Post Offers an Idea

A nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas occupying the…

Tesla’s Elon Musk Hints at Battery Capacity Jump Ahead of Industry Event

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has suggested the US electric carmaker may be…

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Cleared for Takeoff as Space Tourism Race Heats Up

Billionaire Richard Branson’s spaceship company Virgin Galactic said on Friday it received…
Greenland Ice Sheet Depleting Faster Than Forecast, Irreversibly Committed to Sea Level Rise

Greenland Ice Sheet Depleting Faster Than Forecast, Irreversibly Committed to Sea Level Rise

Greenland’s ice sheet is reported so out of balance with the Arctic…