One japanese millionaire took off this Wednesday aboard a russian ship to start a stay of 12 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), a journey that marks Moscow’s return to galactic tourism.
Russia had lost ground in this booming and lucrative sector, which has been revitalized by the involvement of private US companies such as SpaceX or Blue Origin.
The eccentric Yusaku Maezawa, 46, an internet fashion mogul, and his assistant Yozo Hirano took off from the Cosmodrome in Baikonur, in Kazakhstan, at 07:38 GMT, as scheduled. The expected duration of the flight is six hours and coupling to módulo Poisk of the Russian segment of the ISS should occur at 1:41 PM GMT.
Program full of activities
At dawn, the millionaire, his assistant and cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, who will pilot the nave Soyuz, they left their hotel to the sound of a traditional Soviet song that is usually played for all cosmonauts before takeoff. “Dreams come true,” the Japanese millionaire tweeted on Wednesday. “I am as excited as a child before a field trip with the school,” Maezawa said during a press conference on the eve of takeoff.
Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin explained that his companions will have a loaded program. Among the planned activities there is a “friendly” badminton tournament. The millionaire has set himself 100 tasks to accomplish in space and plans to document his stay with videos posted on his YouTube channel. Before the mission, Maezawa and his assistant were preparing in the City of Stars, a city built near Moscow in the 1960s to train cosmonauts.
Since 1990 without Japanese
There are currently seven people on board the ISS, including two Russians and one Japanese. The last trip of a Japanese tourist to space dates back to 1990, when a journalist went to the Soviet Mir station.
The lucrative sector of private space flights has been invigorated by the entrance of American millionaires Elon Musk (SpaceX) y Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin), in addition to the British Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic). In September, SpaceX organized a three-day flight in orbit with a crew consisting entirely of people who are not astronauts. He also plans to take several tourists to go around the Moon in 2023, including Maezawa, which finances the operation.
After a decade of interruption, this Wednesday’s flight marks the return to this sector of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, although the country’s aerospace industry is undermined by the corruption and technical and financial difficulties.
Lost monopoly
In 2020, with the commissioning of the SpaceX capsules, Russia lost the monopoly on manned flights to the ISS and dozens of millions of dollars that NASA and other agencies paid him for each position aboard a Soyuz.
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The mission with the two Japanese is organized by Roscosmos and its US partner Space Adventures. Between 2001 and 2009, these two companies had already sent wealthy entrepreneurs into space eight times. Sign of the willingness of the Russian space sector to renew itself, Roscosmos sent in October a director and an actress to the ISS to shoot the first feature film in orbit in history, anticipating a project by American actor Tom Cruise.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com