This sector, in which Russia has lost ground against private American companies, in particular SpaceX, is experiencing renewed interest and constitutes a potential financial windfall.

The whimsical 46-year-old Yusaku Maezawa, who made his fortune in online fashion, and his assistant Yozo Hirano are due to depart from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 0738 GMT.

Their flight is scheduled to last six hours, with docking expected at the Poisk module of the Russian segment of the ISS at 1341 GMT.

In the morning, the billionaire, his assistant and cosmonaut Alexander Missurkin, who will pilot the Soyuz, left their hotel in Baikonur to the sound of a Soviet song that is traditionally played for all cosmonauts before the flight.

This song - about cosmonauts nostalgic for their home - was partially sung in Japanese.

"Dreams do come true," Mr. Maezawa tweeted Wednesday morning.

“I'm excited like a kid before a class trip,” he said at a press conference on the eve of departure.

Cosmonaut Alexandre Missourkine decided that his companions would have a busy schedule.

He has planned a "friendly" weightless badminton tournament with them.

The billionaire, who has set 100 tasks to accomplish in space, plans to video document his stay on his YouTube channel.

Before that and for long weeks, he and his assistant prepared in Star City, a city built near Moscow in the 1960s to train generations of cosmonauts.

Seven people are currently on board the ISS, including two Russians and a Japanese.

Juicy sector

A Japanese tourist's last trip to space dates back to 1990, when a journalist stayed aboard the Soviet Mir station.

The very lucrative private space flight sector is currently being boosted by the recent entry into the race of the companies of American billionaires Elon Musk (SpaceX) and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin), as well as that of the British Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic).

In September, SpaceX hosted a three-day orbit flight with an all-amateur crew.

She also plans to take several tourists around the moon in 2023, including Mr. Maezawa, who is funding this operation.

After a decade-long hiatus, Wednesday's flight therefore marks the return to the arena of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, as the country's aerospace industry is plagued by corruption scandals and technical difficulties and financial.

In 2020, with the commissioning of SpaceX rockets and capsules, Russia lost its monopoly on manned flights to the ISS and the tens of millions of dollars NASA and other space agencies were paying for each seat on board. of the Soyuz.

The head of the Russian Space Agency Dmitry Rogozin stands on December 8, 2021 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, in front of the rocket that will send Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa SHAMIL ZHUMATOV POOL / AFP into space

The mission of the two Japanese tourists is organized by Roscosmos and its American partner Space Adventures.

Between 2001 and 2009, these two partners had already sent extremely wealthy entrepreneurs into space eight times.

As a sign of the Russian space sector's desire for a facelift, in October Roscosmos sent a director and an actress aboard the ISS to shoot the first feature-length film in orbit history, before a competing project of Hollywood star Tom Cruise.

© 2021 AFP