Russia returns to space tourism race bringing Japanese millionaire to ISS

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft is scheduled to take a Japanese millionaire to the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday, a journey that celebrates Moscow’s efforts to gain a foothold in the lucrative in-orbit tourism business.

The flight will depart from the Baikonur base in Kazakhstan at a crucial time for the Russian space industry, which has been plagued by scandals and competition from the US private sector for years.

Last year, billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX company began ferrying passengers to the ISS, ending a lucrative monopoly that the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) had previously held.

Roscosmos expects to open a new chapter by sending 46-year-old Japanese internet fashion magnate Yusaku Maezawa to ISS, who will travel with his assistant Yozo Hirano.

The spacecraft will be piloted by veteran Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, who has already carried out two missions for the ISS.

Japanese space tourists will spend 12 days at the station, where they will make videos to post on the millionaire’s YouTube account, which has about 750,000 followers.

“It almost makes me want to cry, it’s so awesome,” Maezawa said upon arriving at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Maezawa said he has a list of “almost a hundred tasks” he wants to do on the space station, especially playing a game of badminton.

The two Japanese were trained in Star City, a village built on the outskirts of Moscow in the 1960s, where generations of cosmonauts, first Soviets and then Russians, were trained.

The Soyuz spacecraft — which will carry a Japanese flag for the trip — was transferred to the launch pad on Sunday (5), found an AFP journalist.

Several flights planned

This mission, which was organized by Roscosmos in collaboration with the American company Space Adventures, will mark Russia’s return to the race in space tourism, after a decade of hiatus.

The two partners collaborated between 2001 and 2009 to bring billionaires into space eight times. The last client was the founder of Cirque du Soleil, Canadian Guy Laliberté.

The Japanese travel takes place at a time when private flights to space are increasing. In September, SpaceX staged a historic flight that kept three amateurs in orbit for three days.

A sign of the growing ambition of this business is that Elon Musk’s company hopes to send several tourists around the Moon in 2023.

Maezawa —who finances this operation— is also on the passenger list.

In this race are other actors from the private sector, such as the company Blue Origin, owned by the American billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, who has already organized two trips.

In July, British magnate Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic company allowed the eccentric businessman to fulfill his dream of crossing the frontier into space.

Moscow, which rivaled Washington during the Cold War, is determined to regain its space power status after years of corruption scandals, cutbacks and embarrassing technical problems.