Japanese billionaire(亿万富翁) Yusaku Maezawa arrived for a 12-day stay at the International Space Station, or ISS, on Wednesday. The trip is the latest and the longest in a year of increasing space tourism.
The businessman and his assistant Yozo Hirano left for the station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with Russian astronaut Alexander Misurkin. Hirano went along to film the trip. The price of the trip has not been made public, but some reports say it costs some $50 million. The 46-year-old Maezawa had been training at a space center outside Moscow in recent months.
“I would like to look at the Earth from space. I would like to experience the feeling of weightlessness(失重),” Maezawa said Tuesday before the flight. “And I also have a personal wish: I’m wondering how the space will change me, how I will change after this space flight.”
A company that organized the flight said Maezawa listed 100 things to do in space after asking the public for ideas. The list includes “simple things about daily life to maybe some other fun activities, to more serious questions as well,” Space Adventures President Tom Shelley said.
Maezawa made his money in clothes, creating Japan’s largest online fashion site, Zozotown. He joins the list of billionaires who have recently paid for trips to space. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson both went to space earlier this year.
Maezawa is also planning a trip around the moon on Elon Musk’s Starship(星际飞船). That trip is organized for a time in the next few years. He will join that trip with eight competition winners.
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