Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa arrived aboard the International Space Station (Iss) after travelling in a Russian capsule. This also marks Moscow's return to orbital tourism. The Japanese tycoon is the 22nd person to date to go to space for a vacation. 

The Soyuz MS-20 mission -composed of the Soyuz-2.1a launch rocket and the Soyuz Ms spacecraft- departed yesterday from the Bajkonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. After a journey of about six hours it docked with the Iss. The crew consists of commander Aleksandr Misurkin and two Japanese tourists: the entrepreneur and his commercial assistant Yozo Hirano. The three will remain in orbit for 12 days and will film their stay aboard the orbital station.

The entrepreneur is founder of the on-line fashion company Zozo. He and his assistant became the first space tourists to travel to the Iss in more than a decade. Maezawa, a well-known art collector, has a net worth of 1.9 billion dollars and has made it known that his ambitions don't end there, having signed on for a more ambitious trip around the moon on Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket scheduled for 2023.

On the same topic see the article published by AVIONEWS.