Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire space tourist, and his two fellow crewmates returned to Earth Monday. This was the culmination of his 12-day trip to the International Space Station. It is a feat that has highlighted space tourism’s rise to prominence.
Maezawa landed on plain grasslands in Kazakhstan at the planned time of 0913 in the morning. The spacecraft carried two other passengers with Maezawa. Russian cosmonaut, Alexander Misurkin was responsible for piloting the spacecraft and Yozo Hirano, Maewawa’s video producer, also came along to record his journey through space.
First, Misurkin was taken out of the spacecraft. Next came Maezawa and Hirano. Maezawa waved while being moved to a truck by the retrieval crew. All three are in good physical and mental health.
On Dec. 8, the crew arrived at the ISS, making Maezawa & Hirano the first Japanese private tourists to visit the Earth-orbiting laboratory.
Maezawa shared his experiences on the space station via Twitter, live media interviews, and videos. He also posted about the difficulties of eating soup, urinating in midair, and the challenges of sleeping in midair.
Maezawa said that he experienced space sickness in the first days of his arrival. He shared a YouTube video that shows the ISS’s 90-minute orbit around Earth. The sun rises and sets behind the planet in one YouTube post.
Maezawa stated that he would like to go back to space but admitted that it is prohibitively expensive and takes too much time for most people. Maezawa spent three years in Star City, near Moscow, for astronaut training before his trip to orbit.
Source: Asia.Nikkei
YouTube: Yusaku Maezawa【MZ】
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