Japanese billionaire is the next space tourist aboard the International Station

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano will be the next space tourists to stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Russian space agency Roscosmos announced on Thursday.

“The duration of the space trip will be 12 days,” said the Russian space agency, which will coordinate the mission to put the two men into orbit, an operation scheduled for December.

“The crew commander will be Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexandre Missourkine,” said the Russian agency in a note posted on its website, adding that the process of training the crew will begin in June and that the flight is scheduled for December 8.

This eccentric Japanese billionaire, who made his fortune in the area of ​​online commerce, in particular with the sale of clothing, also plans to take eight other people with him on another space adventure: a trip to the Moon scheduled for 2023 through SpaceX, an aerospace company founded by the well-known businessman Elon Musk.

“I am so curious about what life is like in space that I intend to discover it for myself and share it with the world on my YouTube channel [plataforma de partilha de vídeos]”said Yusaku Maezawa, quoted by international agencies.

Roscosmos’ bet on these ISS expeditions on tourism occurs after the Russian space agency lost, in 2020, the monopoly of manned flights due to the success of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, a situation that implied unexpected financial losses, namely the gains that were associated with seats acquired by US and European space agencies.