Russia sends Japanese billionaire to ISS
BAIKONUR (Kazakhstan): A Russian rocket lifted off yesterday, carrying a Japanese billionaire to the International Space Station (ISS) and marking the country’s return to space tourism after a decade-long pause.
Online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and his production assistant Yozo Hirano blasted off from the Russia-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 0738 GMT.
Their journey aboard the threeperson Soyuz spacecraft, piloted by cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, will take just over six hours.
On launch day, Maezawa and his crew left their hotel in Baikonur to a Soviet-era song played for all cosmonauts ahead of their flights, which was sung partially in Japanese.
Maezawa’s family and friends waved him off as he was driven to get his spacesuit fitted.
“Dream come true,” the tycoon tweeted yesterday morning.
Fellow billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson all made breakthrough commercial tourism flights this year.
After docking at the Poisk module of the Russian segment of the ISS, the trio will spend 12 days on the station. The Japanese tourists plan to document their daily life aboard the ISS to share on Maezawa’s popular YouTube channel.
The 46-year-old billionaire has set out 100 tasks to complete while on board, including hosting a badminton tournament in orbit.
The ISS is home to an international crew of seven people, including two Russian cosmonauts and a Japanese astronaut.
Maezawa also plans to take eight people with him on a 2023 mission around the moon operated by Musk’s SpaceX.
He and his assistant will be the first private Japanese citizens to visit space since journalist Toyohiro Akiyama travelled to the Mir space station in 1990.
Before its pause from the industry, Russia had a history of shepherding self-funded tourists to space.
In partnership with US-based company Space Adventures, the Roscosmos space agency has taken eight tourists to the space station since 2001.
In October, Russia launched its first untrained cosmonauts into space since that trip, delivering a Russian actress and director to the ISS where they filmed scenes for the first movie in orbit.
Moscow had stopped sending tourists to space after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) retired the Space Shuttle in 2011, which left Russia with a monopoly on supplying the ISS.
Nasa bought up all Soyuz launch seats for a reported US$90 million per spot — effectively ending tourist flights.
But that all changed last year when a SpaceX spacecraft successfully delivered its first astronauts to the ISS.
Nasa began purchasing flights from SpaceX, stripping Russia of its monopoly and costing its cash-strapped space agency millions of dollars in revenue.
While the cost of tickets to space for tourists has not been disclosed, Space Adventures has indicated that they are in the range of US$50 to 60 million.