Space tourism returns to the ISS after a decade with a Japanese millionaire

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa flew today aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) together with his assistant Yozo Hirano, making him the first space tourist on the orbital platform in more than a decade.

The Soyuz left the Russian Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe at 07:38 GMT with the two Japanese crew members and the spacecraft commander, cosmonaut Alexandr Misurkin, inside.

Two special tourists

It is the first time that two space visitors have traveled in the same spacecraft to the ISS and the first tourist flight to the orbital platform since 2009, when Canadian Guy Laliberté, founder of the Circo de Sol, last set foot on the station.

The Japanese businessman, also known as “MZ” and who is the thirtieth richest man in his country, according to the Forbes list, will remain on the international orbital platform for twelve days and will return to Earth on the 19th.

Maezawa, a 46-year-old modern art and record collector, took over Japan’s largest online fashion retail business, Zozo, selling a majority stake in a multi-million dollar operation in 2019.

His assistant Yozo will film his boss’s adventure on the ISS, which has been made possible thanks to the cooperation of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, with the American company Space Adventure.

Maezawa, who also heads the project “dearMoon” (dear Moon) to travel to the Earth’s natural satellite in 2023 with the help of the American company SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, intends to share his impressions of life in space on his channel from YouTube.

The businessman and his assistant began training for flight and its temporary life about 400 kilometers from the Earth’s surface last June.

Lightning trip to the ISS

The three Soyuz crew members docked with the Russian ISS Poisk module after circling orbit four times and completing six hours of flight time.

Two hours later the floodgates were opened and the three crew members were received by the current tenants of the international orbital platform: cosmonauts Anton Skaplerov and Piotr Dubrov, American NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei, Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron and that of the European Space Agency (ESA) Matthias Maurer.

“We are glad to see you. We congratulate them on their arrival at the ISS, we are glad that everything went well ”, Misurkin’s mother greeted them from the Flight Control Center.

The cosmonauts were able to chat for several minutes with family members, including Maezawa’s children, before communication was lost.

According to the head of Space Adventures in Russia, Sergei Kostenki, the official Russian agency TASS, a flight into space with the Soyuz costs about 50 million dollars.

Russia has cooperated with the American company, a competitor of SpaceX, since 2001, when the first tourist, the American Dennis Tito, flew to the ISS, an adventure for which he paid about 20 million dollars, according to the Russian daily RBC.

The ISS opened its doors to seven space tourists: Tito (2001) was the first to travel to the platform, followed by South African Mark Shuttleworth, nicknamed the “Afronaut” (2002), and American Gregory Olsen (2005).

Iranian-American Anousha Ansari was the first female tourist to travel to the station (2006), followed by Hungarian-American Charles Simonyi (2007) and Richard Garriott, son of former American astronaut Owen Garriott (2008).

Simonyi was the only tourist to repeat the experience in March 2009, while Laliberté was the last neophyte to stay at the ISS, from where he directed a show to alert the world to the problem of water scarcity.

Monopolize space tourism

Last year SpaceX ushered in the era of commercial missions to space, ending the Russian monopoly since the retirement of space shuttles in 2011 and thus freeing up some seats on the Soyuz, which space tourists can now take advantage of.

Last October Glavkosmos, the commercial operator of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, signed a contract with four space tourists who will fly into the cosmos on Soyuz spacecraft in 2024.

That same month, Russia added another milestone to its history of space successes by sending a recording crew into space to film the first fictional feature film aboard the ISS, thus ahead of Hollywood and NASA projects.

After the launch on Wednesday, the director general of the Russian space agency, Dmitri Rogozin, said that Russia “has no intention of giving up” the niche of tourist space flights to the United States and is willing to “fight to maintain it.”