Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa Arrives At Space Station
NDTV
Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson all made breakthrough commercial tourism flights this year, bursting into a market Russia is keen to defend.
A Japanese billionaire arrived at the International Space Station on Wednesday, marking Russia's return to space tourism after a decade-long pause that saw the rise of competition from the United States.
Online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan earlier on Wednesday.
They docked with the Poisk module of the Russian segment of the ISS at 1340 GMT, the Russian space agency said.
A Roscosmos livefeed showed the hatch of the Soyuz MS-20 capsule open at 1611 GMT, showing Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin entering the ISS, followed by Maezawa and Hirano.
