TOKYO: Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa said Thursday that he will visit the International Space Station in December, becoming the first non-astronaut Japanese space traveler.

Maezawa, 45, the founder of online fashion mall operator Zozo Inc., will travel to the ISS on a three-seater Russian Soyuz spacecraft, together with Yozo Hirano, 35, an executive of a Maezawa-related firm, and a Russian astronaut.

The ISS trip will precede his journey to the moon expected for 2023. In 2018, he was chosen as one of the first passengers of a moon flight by US aerospace firm SpaceX.

Maezawa has a contract with US space travel firm Space Adventures, which offers space trips using Soyuz. He will receive training for the ISS flight, including in Russia, from mid-June. He has already passed pre-training tests.

The Soyuz spaceship carrying Maezawa and the two others is scheduled to be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 8. After staying in the ISS for about 12 days, they will return to Earth, landing on the steppe in the same country.

Since 2001, a total of 12 ISS trips using Soyuz have been conducted, with every participant having returned to Earth safely.

The forthcoming ISS trip will make Maezawa and Hirano the 13th and 14th Japanese on a space flight. All of their predecessors were qualified astronauts, including the first one, then television journalist Toyohiro Akiyama, 78, who flew on a Soyuz in December 1990.

JIJI Press