billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his crew have landed in Kazakhstan after approximately 12 days of experiencing and documenting life in space.
The Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft carrying billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, assistant Yozo Hirano, and astronaut Alexander Misurkin landed in Kazakhstan on December 20. (Video: NASA TV)
Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa – founder of the online fashion retail company ZOZO, video assistant Yozo Hirano, and astronaut Alexander Misurkin from the Russian space agency Roscosmos returned to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft. The trio landed in the southeast grasslands near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 10:13 AM Hanoi time (9:13 AM local time) on December 20.
The landing, assisted by a parachute, marked the conclusion of Russia’s first short-term stay on the International Space Station (ISS) for two space tourists aboard the same spacecraft. Previous flights had only one tourist in the crew and involved swapping a new Soyuz spacecraft with another that had docked with the ISS for several months.
Misurkin, Maezawa, and Hirano arrived at the ISS on December 8, after a roughly 6-hour flight from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Before takeoff, Maezawa began sharing his journey through a series of short videos filmed and edited by Hirano. Upon arrival, he shared an additional 14 videos on various topics, ranging from “space fashion” to “snacking in a zero-gravity environment.”
At the end of the trip, Maezawa, Hirano, and Misurkin entered the Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft and closed the hatch to prepare for their return. The spacecraft undocked from the ISS’s Poisk research module at 6:50 AM on December 20. By 9:18 AM, the spacecraft fired its engines to descend from orbit, beginning its re-entry to Earth.
A welcome team awaited near the landing site to greet the crew, assisting them out of the Soyuz landing capsule and conducting preliminary medical checks. The trio was then flown by helicopter to the city of Karaganda, Kazakhstan, before boarding a plane to Star City, Russia, and the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.
Yusaku Maezawa, Alexander Misurkin, and Yozo Hirano (in blue, from left to right) alongside 7 astronauts (in gray) on the ISS. (Photo: NASA)
Maezawa and Hirano’s flight contract was negotiated by Space Adventures, the only company to date that has sent customers to the ISS. Prior to this flight, Space Adventures had taken 7 customers to the space station across 8 flights (with one passenger flying twice).
Misurkin, Maezawa, and Hirano also contributed to setting a new record for the most people in space simultaneously. For a few minutes on December 11, a total of 19 people were in space, including the 3 crew members of Soyuz MS-20, 7 members of Expedition 66 on the ISS, 3 astronauts on the Chinese space station, and 6 passengers aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard.
