Russia is poised to get back into the lucrative orbital tourism business, sending a Japanese billionaire into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). On Wednesday 8 December, bizarre 46-year-old Yusaku Maezawa, who made a fortune in online fashion, and his assistant Yozo Hirano, will take off from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome at 7:38 GMT. [8 h 30 à Paris]. Their flight will last six hours, docking at the Poisk module of the Russian ISS segment at 13:41 GMT.
They are expected to stay twelve days in the station, on board of which there are already seven people, including two Russians and a Japanese. “I am as excited as a child before a school trip”Maezawa said at a press conference on the eve of the departure. Cosmonaut Alexandre Missourkine, who will pilot the Soyuz, felt his comrades would have a busy schedule. He’s scheduled a tournament with them ” friendly “ of badminton in zero gravity.
The billionaire, who has set a hundred tasks for himself in space, plans to video document his stay on his YouTube channel. Before that and for long weeks, he and his assistant prepared for Star City, a city built near Moscow in the 1960s to train generations of cosmonauts.
A thriving and competitive sector
The last space trip of a Japanese tourist dates back to 1990, when a journalist was staying aboard the Soviet Mir station. The highly profitable private space flight sector is currently being boosted by the recent entry into the competition of the companies of American billionaires Elon Musk (SpaceX) and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin), as well as that of Britain’s Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic). In September, SpaceX hosted a three-day orbital flight with an all amateur crew. He also plans to take several tourists around the moon in 2023, including Mr. Maezawa.
After a 10-year hiatus, Wednesday’s flight marks the return to the arena of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, as the country’s aerospace industry is plagued by corruption scandals and technical and financial hardships.
In 2020, with the commissioning of SpaceX rockets and capsules, Russia lost its monopoly on manned flights to the ISS and the tens of millions of dollars that NASA and other space agencies were paying for every seat aboard the ISS. Soyuz. The mission of the two Japanese tourists is organized by Roscosmos and the American company Space Adventures. Between 2001 and 2009, these two partners had already sent extremely wealthy entrepreneurs into space eight times.
As a sign of the Russian space industry’s desire to renew itself, Roscosmos sent a director and actress aboard the ISS in October to shoot the first feature film in orbit history, ahead of a competing project by Hollywood star Tom Cruise.
