Skift Take

Yusaku Maezawa reportedly paid about $1.9 billion for the space voyage, a trial run of sorts for a moon orbit of on an Elon Musk's SpaceX vehicle, slated for 2023. You can scoff at space tourism for now, but in a decade it could be a thing in ultra-luxury travel.

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa returned to Earth on Monday after a 12-day journey into space, ending a practice run for his planned trip around the moon with Elon Musk’s SpaceX in 2023.

The 46-year-old fashion magnate and art collector, who launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 8 along with his assistant Yozo Hirano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, landed on the Kazakh steppe.

Maezawa, a space enthusiast, made the trip in a Soyuz spacecraft and became the first space tourist to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) in more than a decade.

One of Japan’s most flamboyant public figures, Maezawa entertained his social media followers from space by taking photos of his home prefecture of Chiba, showing how to make tea in zero gravity and discussing his shortage of fresh underwear.

The entrepreneur returned to snowy conditions on Earth, with precipitation and sub-zero temperatures at the landing site about 150 km (93 miles) south east of the town of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan.

Maezawa will become the first private passenger on the SpaceX moon trip in 2023, as commercial firms including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin usher in a new age of space travel for wealthy clients.

The billionaire, who sold his online fashion business Zozo to SoftBank in 2019, is searching for eight people who will join him in his moon voyage in 2023, requiring applicants to pass medical tests and an interview.

(Reporting by Shamil Zhumatov; Writing by Alexander Marrow and Sam Nussey; Editing by William Maclean and Gerry Doyle)

This article was written by Shamil Zhumatov from Reuters and was legally licensed through the Industry Dive publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to [email protected].

smartphone

The Daily Newsletter

Our daily coverage of the global travel industry. Written by editors and analysts from across Skift’s brands.

Have a confidential tip for Skift? Get in touch

Tags: elon musk, luxury, space, space tourism

Photo credit: SpaceX plans a moon orbit with a Japanese billionaire on board in 2023. Pictured, European Space Agency Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, a Flight Engineer on the International Space Station with Expedition 42, took this Earth observation picture of lower California and Mexico on Jan. 2, 2015.

Up Next

Loading next stories