Japanese tycoon Yusaku Maezawa reported Thursday eight group individuals who will go along with him for an excursion around the Moon made arrangements for 2023 on a SpaceX rocket that is still being worked on.
In 2018, the mission, which is called dearMoon, was first announced. Maezawa initially stated that he would invite a group of six to eight artists, but he later changed the entry requirements to include an online competition.
Steve Aoki, a DJ and producer from the United States, was one of the eight individuals chosen; American YouTuber Tim Dodd; Yemi AD, a Czech musician; Irish photographer Rhiannon Adam; Karim Iliya, a photographer from Britain; Brendan Hall, an American filmmaker; and Indian actor Dev Joshi, as well as South Korean K-pop musician TOP.
Additionally, there were two backup crew members: snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington of the US and artist Miyu of Japan.
“I hope each and every one will recognize the responsibility that comes with leaving the Earth, traveling to the Moon and back,” Maezawa said in an announcement video on YouTube.
“They will gain a lot from this experience, and I hope they will use that to contribute to the planet, to humanity.”
A mission profile image on the dearMoon website indicates that the round trip would take almost six days and would not require a landing.
SpaceX’s Starship will be the most powerful rocket ever built when it is finished.
SpaceX’s upper stage has completed successful test flights in the atmosphere and successfully landed, but the company has yet to perform an orbital test flight, despite Elon Musk’s repeated assurances that this will happen by the end of 2022.
Maezawa, the super-rich founder of Japan’s largest online fashion mall, paid a reported 10 billion yen ($73 million at current exchange rates) to fly to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket last year.