Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa arrives on the Worldwide House Station on Dec. 8, 2021 after launching on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
NASA TV
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa arrived on the Worldwide House Station on Wednesday, the place he’ll spend practically two weeks visiting as a personal area vacationer.
Maezawa launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft together with manufacturing assistant Yozo Hirano and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin. The Japanese entrepreneur booked the spaceflight by U.S. firm House Adventures, which has beforehand despatched seven vacationers to the area station on Russian autos.
“I’m excited to share each side of my journey with everybody on Earth,” Maezawa mentioned in a press release earlier than the launch.
Notably, Maezawa’s ISS go to comes after he booked a visit to the moon with SpaceX, along with his undertaking known as “dearMoon” that was introduced in 2018. He plans to fly 10 to 12 folks on SpaceX’s Starship rocket for a multi-day journey that may attain lunar orbit, with Maezawa saying he “can pay for the whole journey.”
SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Maezawa gave an replace on the lunar Starship journey earlier this yr, with the corporate’s schedule nonetheless concentrating on 2023. The dearMoon mission would take three days to fly to the moon, loop behind it in orbit, after which spend three days returning.
For now, Maezawa is in orbit across the Earth – the place he’ll spend about 12 days on board the ISS earlier than returning on Dec. 19.
Maezawa made his fortune after founding trend retail firm Zozotown, which he resigned from in 2019 after promoting a majority stake to SoftBank.
