He was to be the first tourist sent around the Moon by Space X, in 2023. Yusaku Maezawa, a 46-year-old Japanese man who made his fortune in fashion, will first experience life in space on board of the ISS. With his assistant Yozo Hirano and the Russian cosmonaut Alexandre Missourkine, he took off this Wednesday morning aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome. Stowage scheduled for 13:41 GMT, after 6 hours of flight.
The two Japanese will spend twelve days in the orbital station, only in the Russian segment. “Dreams do come true,” Yusaku Maezawa tweeted Wednesday morning. Cosmonaut Alexandre Missourkine decided that his companions would have a busy schedule. He has planned with them a “friendly” badminton tournament in zero gravity. The billionaire has set himself 100 tasks to accomplish in space, after long weeks of preparation in Star City. His assistant is also present to document this trip on YouTube.
Star tourism war
Above all, this trip marks Russia’s return to space tourism, as more and more wealthy men want to experience a stay in space. After ten years of hiatus on the subject, the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos could no longer ignore the phenomenon launched by Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson.
Between corruption scandals, technical and financial difficulties and the loss of the monopoly of manned flights to the ISS, for the benefit of Space X, Roscosmos sorely needs this financial windfall. A sign of the Russian space sector’s desire for a facelift, Roscosmos also dispatched a director and an actress to the ISS in October to shoot the first feature-length film in orbit history, before a competing project. by Hollywood star Tom Cruise.