Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa announced on June 1 that he had decided to cancel the plan because the planned flight around the moon could not determine a timetable in the short term.
Yusaku Maezawa's visit to the International Space Station in 2021 Data map
Yusaku Maezawa is the founder and art collector of Walk City, Japan's largest online fashion mall. In 2018, SpaceX, founded by American technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, announced that Yusaku Maezawa would become the first private client of his commercial tour around the moon, sent into space by the Starship heavy-lift launch vehicle for a flight around the moon.
On April 20, 2023, the new-generation heavy-lift launch vehicle "Starship" and the spacecraft integration system were launched at the launch base in Boca Chica, Texas
According to the original plan, Yusaku Maezawa was supposed to fly around the moon with several celebrities by the end of 2023. In November, he said the trip would be postponed until 2024 or later.
Yu Maezawa opened a website called "Dear Moon" for this flight. The website said in a June 1 statement that the plan had become "unfeasible" and that Maezawa had decided to cancel the plan. "Since there is no clear timetable in the short term, Yusaku Maezawa made this decision with a heavy heart."
On April 20, 2023, the new-generation heavy-lift launch vehicle "Xingzhou" and the spacecraft integration system exploded after liftoff
Yusaku Maezawa confirmed the news in a post on the social media platform X. He wrote: "It is still completely impossible to predict when it will be able to fly. In this situation, I couldn't plan my future, and it made me feel bad to have my companions wait longer, so I made the difficult decision to cancel the trip. ”
In 2021, Yusaku Maezawa traveled to the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft, becoming the first private visitor to visit the ISS in more than a decade.
Source: Xinhua K25