(ANSA) - BAIKONUR, DECEMBER 06 - Russia will send Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa to the International Space Station on Wednesday in a move that marks Moscow's return to the space tourism sector, now booming after a ten-year pause.
Maezawa, one of the richest men in Japan, 46, will take off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Japanese-flagged Soyuz spacecraft, accompanied by his assistant Yozo Hirano.
The mission will put an end to a ten-year hiatus in the Russian space tourism program that has not accepted tourists since 2009: the last passenger in that year was the Canadian co-founder of Cirque du Soleil Guy Laliberte.
In October, however, the Russian space agency Roscosmos sent actress Yulia Peresild and director KlimShipenko to the ISS to shoot the scenes of the first film in orbit in an attempt to beat a rival Hollywood project.
(HANDLE).