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20 Dec 2021
Japan Billionaire Maezawa Lands in Kazakhstan after 12-day Space Flight
The Index Today
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa finally returned to Earth on Monday after a 12-day journey into space, ending a dry run for his planned trip around the moon with Elon Musk's SpaceX in 2023.
Maezawa who is at his mid 40’s who is known as a fashion magnate and art collector, launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 8 along with his assistant Yozo Hirano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, landed on the Kazakhstan steppe.
He 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.
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, Reuters reported.
Maezawa will become the first private passenger on the SpaceX moon trip in 2023, as commercial firms including Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin aide in a new age of space travel for the wealthy clients.
©Photo: SHAMIL ZHUMATOV / POOL / AFP
