Spacemen in the making: Training for trip to International Space Station

Space flight participants Yusaku Maezawa and Yozo Hirano and back-up participant Shun Ogiso performing a zero-gravity flight last month while training ahead of the expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) in the Moscow region, Russia.

Mr Maezawa, a 45-year-old billionaire entrepreneur and art collector, and Mr Hirano, 36, his production assistant who will document the flight, will be led by Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, 44, on the mission scheduled for Dec 8.

It will be the first time Russian space agency Roscosmos has taken a tourist to the ISS since 2009.

Mr Maezawa made headlines in 2018 when he was announced as the first man to book a spot aboard a lunar spaceship being developed by Roscosmos rival SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk.

The Japanese tycoon made his fortune as the founder of online fashion store Zozo, which he sold to Yahoo! Japan in 2019.

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