(Roscosmos)
An international crew of two Japanese space tourist and a Russian cosmonaut launched this morning the Baikonur cosmodrome.
The crew of Alexander Misurkin, the billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and the video director Yozo Hirano traveled aboard the Soyuz MS-20 transport vehicle.
Roscosmos has repeatedly sent tourists to the Russian segment of the International Space Station.
Through the efforts of the Russian corporation and the American company Space Adventures, seven non-professional cosmonauts visited it. One of them, Charles Simonyi, twice.
But the last such mission of Roscosmos was in 2009. Since then, there have been no tourists on the ISS, except for the film crew, which filmed a feature film at the station in October.
Ten years later, Roscosmos announced that it would send two space tourists to the ISS. They turned out to be the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who also plans to fly around the moon in the Starship spacecraft in 2023, and video director Yozo Hirano.
They both passed a medical examination and, according to its results, were admitted to pre-flight preparation, which began in the Star City near Moscow in June.
The Soyuz-2.1a rocket with the Soyuz MS-20 transport vehicle was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome on Wednesday at 10:38 local time.
Its flight to the ISS followed a four-orbit scheme. At 16:41 Soyuz MS-20 is docked to the Poisk small research module.
After docking, space tourists together with the crew commander were transfered to the ISS. Yusaku Maezawa and Yozo Hirano will spend 12 days on board the station.
They plan to shoot videos for the YouTube channel and perform experiments in low gravity.
Sources:
- Baylor College of Medicine: https://www.bcm.edu/news/international-research-collaboration-designed-to-increase-understanding-of-human-adaptation-to-spaceflight
- YouTube: