Japanese billionaire who spent 12 days on ISS meets Musk, to make major announcement soon

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who founded fashion site ZOZO, tweeted today that he would be making a big announcement about space on December 8. Maezawa, who had earlier visited the International Space Station, wrote the tweet after an online meeting with SpaceX’s Elon Musk. He had teased a similar upcoming ‘major announcement about space’ on December 1.

In 2021, Maezawa became the first Japanese private citizen in space since journalist Toyohiro Akiyana who visited the Russian space station Mir in 1990. Maezawa visited the International Space Station (ISS) on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft last year where he spent 12 days.

He is also in line to become the first civilian to fly by the moon on SpaceX’s  Starship in 2023. A self-confessed space enthusiast, Maezawa launched the lunar tourism project, called dearMoon, in 2021. He invited eight civilians to join for a fully-financed week-long expedition with him on the Starship. 

“...I wanted my invitation to reach out to a broader community and give more people from around the globe the chance to join this journey,” he said in a video announcement. The Japanese billionaire earned much of his fortune (making up to 150 billion yen) after he sold ZOZO to Softbank in 2019.

SpaceX’s Starship, a fully reusable spacecraft that has been under test for a few years now is expected to take people and cargo to the moon, and possibly even Mars. The company already has a few customers on board for missions around the moon, including Maezawa and space tourism pioneer Dennis Tito.

In November, NASA awarded a $1.5 billion contract to SpaceX to develop its Starship for “long-term human exploration of the Moon under Artemis.” Artemis is a series of missions by NASA for lunar and Mars exploration.

As part of the contract, SpaceX will provide a second crewed landing demonstration mission in 2027 for Artemis IV. Earlier in 2021, NASA awarded its Human Landing System (HLS, a key part of Artemis program) contract worth USD 2.9 billion that would allow NASA astronauts to return to the lunar surface, first time since the Apollo program.