Japanese space tourists return after 12 days on space station

ALMATY (Kazakhstan) • A Japanese billionaire returned to Earth yesterday, Russia's space agency said, after 12 days spent on the International Space Station (ISS) where he made videos about performing mundane tasks in space including brushing teeth and going to the bathroom.

Online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano parachuted onto Kazakhstan's steppe at around the expected landing target of 9.13am local time, along with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin.

"The flight of the 'tourist' spacecraft Soyuz MS-20 has been completed," Roscosmos said in a statement on its website, without providing an exact time for the landing. The trio's journey marked Russia's return to space tourism after a decade-long pause that saw the rise of competition from the United States.

The trio spent 12 days in the orbiting laboratory where the Japanese tourists documented their daily life aboard the ISS for Mr Maezawa's popular YouTube channel. Addressing his one million followers on YouTube, the 46-year-old billionaire explained how to brush teeth and go to the bathroom while in space.

In one of the videos, he explained in detail the business of relieving oneself on the ISS.

"Peeing is very easy," he said as he showed a handheld funnel that astronauts use to suck their urine away.

In other videos, he showed his followers how to properly drink tea and sleep in zero gravity.

When the three space travellers arrived on the ISS on Dec 8, they joined a seven-team crew who were engaged in space biology and physics research.

Mr Maezawa has plans to take eight people with him on a 2023 mission around the Moon in a venture operated by Mr Elon Musk's SpaceX.

He and his assistant are the first private Japanese citizens to visit space since journalist Toyohiro Akiyama travelled to the Mir station in 1990.

Their return from space caps a banner year seen by many as a turning point for private space travel.

Billionaires Mr Musk, Mr Jeff Bezos and Mr Richard Branson all made breakthrough commercial tourism flights this year, bursting into a market that Russia is keen to defend.

Russia has a history of sending self-funded tourists to space. In partnership with US-based company Space Adventures, Roscosmos has previously taken seven tourists to the ISS since 2001 - one of them twice. The last was Canada's Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberte in 2009, who was dubbed the first clown in space.

In October, Russia launched its first untrained cosmonauts into space since Mr Laliberte's trip, delivering a Russian actress and a director to the ISS, where they filmed scenes for the first movie in orbit.

Moscow had stopped sending tourists to space after US space agency Nasa retired its Space Shuttle in 2011, which left Russia with a monopoly on supplying the ISS.

Nasa bought up all Soyuz launch seats for a reported US$90 million (S$123 million) per spot - effectively ending tourist flights. That changed last year when a SpaceX spacecraft successfully delivered its first astronauts to the ISS.

Nasa began purchasing flights from SpaceX, stripping Russia of its monopoly and costing its cash-strapped space agency millions of dollars in revenue.

While the cost of tickets to space for tourists has not been disclosed, Space Adventures has indicated that they are in the range of US$50 million to US$60 million.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE