Roscosmos Launches Soyuz MS-20 with Yusaku Maezawa

Credit: Yusaku Maezawa

On Wednesday, December 8 at 2:38 ET (7:38 UTC), Roscosmos launched Soyuz MS-20 for Space Adventures atop a Soyuz 2.1 a rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It docked six hours later. Space Adventures is a space tourism company which gets people on Soyuz. From 2001 to 2009, they flew 7 people aboard Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS. When the space shuttle stopped flying in 2011, these space tourism missions became impossible as NASA needed seats for their astronauts. But now, since Crew Dragon is in operation with Starliner coming soon, Space Adventures can continue to fly space tourism missions.

The crew is:

- Yusaku Maezawa - Spaceflight Participant; First Flight; plans to fly on the SpaceX Starship dearMoon mission

- Yozo Hirano - Spaceflight Participant; First Flight; assistant to Yusaku Maezawa

- Aleksandr Misurkin - Spacecraft Commander; Third Flight

Credit: Roscomos

This is the second Soyuz flight with spaceflight participants this year after Soyuz MS-19, which took a cosmonaut and a Russian film crew (producer and actress) to the ISS. Unlike the previous mission, the cosmonaut will not stay aboard the space station when the tourists leave but will depart with them approximately 10 days after liftoff, on Sunday, December 19.