Who is Yusaku Maezawa, the Japanese billionaire who will spend 12 days on ISS?

Billionaire Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa reached the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday for a 12-day ride, throughout which era he’s going to whole one hundred obligations in area, together with gambling a sport of badminton

Maezawa and some other area vacationer Yozo Hirano–who will record the billionaire’s area flight–made the ride led through Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin.

The 3 reached the ISS aboard a Soyuz MS-20 that took off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Maezawa and Hirano are flying as a part of a agreement signed among the Russian area business enterprise Roscosmos and Space Adventures in 2019, for a short-time period spaceflight of non-expert astronauts to the ISS. Their flight became introduced in May. Space Adventures is a non-public corporation based in 1997 with the purpose of offering “bookable area-associated adventures”.

Tourists in area

Companies together with Virgin Atlantic, SpaceX, XCOR Aerospace, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Armadillo Aerospace are operating on supplying area tourism offerings to humans.

But Space Adventures is the simplest non-public corporation to ship paying clients to orbital area so far, a record through the Congressional Research Service notes. In 2004, check pilot Mike Melville have become the primary non-public astronaut to fly past the Karman Line (regarded as the threshold of area).

In 2008, billionaire online game developer Richard Garriott have become the 6th non-public citizen to fly to area. As consistent with media reports, Garriott paid over $30 million to spend approximately 12 days on the ISS, for which he traveled aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

With Wednesday’s fight, the Russian area business enterprise resumed crewed area tourism flights after a duration of 12 years. In 2001, American millionaire Dennis Tito (additionally a consumer of Space Adventures) have become the primary non-astronaut to enter area, however in 2010, the distance business enterprise suspended its area program.

In October, “Challenge” have become the primary characteristic period movie to be shot in area. The movie’s director Klim Shipenko, in conjunction with Russian actress Yulia Peresild who’s gambling the lead role, and a cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, released from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft closer to the ISS in October. Shipenko and Peresild additionally spent 12 days at the ISS and shot a few segments of the movie beneathneath a business settlement among Roscosmos and a few Moscow-primarily based totally media entities.

Who is Yusaku Maezawa?

Maezawa, 46, is the founding father of Zozo Inc., an internet retail brand. He based Japan’s biggest on-line shopping center in 1998 and resigned as its CEO in September 2019, promoting maximum of his stake to Yahoo Japan.

Maezawa additionally holds aims to take a ride to the Moon in 2023 in partnership with SpaceX. In 2018, Elon Musk introduced that his corporation SpaceX could ship him to the Moon as its first non-public consumer.His bio on Twitter reads, “First civilian to fly across the moon on @SpaceX’s Starship in 2023 @dearMoonProject, and visit the ISS on Soyuz in Dec eighth 2021.” He plans to take 8 humans in conjunction with him for the 2023 venture to the Moon.