Russia displays its new ambitions in space

Russia released these new ambitions into space on Thursday May 13th with two back-to-back announcements, while the space agency Roscosmos has fought for years and tries to revive itself after corruption and competition scandals from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

First, it announced Thursday that it plans to send Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yuzu Hirano, who are responsible for documenting the adventure, to the International Space Station (ISS). The flight is scheduled to take place on December 8, aboard a Soyuz missile. The duration of the space flight is twelve days.The agency commented, adding that crew training will begin in June.

“I’m so curious about life in space that I planned to try it out on my own and share it with the world on my YouTube channel.”Yusaku Maezawa, 45, commented in Press release from Space AdventuresThe broker who organizes the trip.

“The first fictional movie in space”

In addition, Roscosmos also announced that, in October, it will send actress Yulia Peresild, 36, and director Clem Chipinko, 37, aboard the International Space Station for filming there. “The first fictional movie in space”, A work we only know of the title of “Le Défi”.

The expedition is scheduled to start on October 5, 2021 from Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft.According to Roscosmos. The movie is a file “Spatial drama”, It is still according to the Russian Space Agency and will be directed by Mr. Chibenko, author of Russian films « Kholoub »LLiott-7 ” And the ‘Text’.

The feature film is produced by Dmitry Rogozin, president of Roscosmos, who wants Russia to be the first to implement such a project, while NASA is working with Tom Cruise on the same type of project.

The announcement of the resumption of tourist flights to the International Space Station comes at a time when, in 2020, Russia lost its monopoly on the manned flights it had maintained since 2011. Since May 2020, SpaceX’s rockets and capsules have “managed to” send astronauts to the station, and thus Securing contracts from NASA and Europe Shorting tens of millions of dollars for every seat for Russia.

Roscosmos and Space Adventures actually teamed up between 2001 and 2009 to send, on eight occasions, extremely wealthy space entrepreneurs, the latest of whom was Canadian founder Cirque du Soleil Guy Laliberté. His successor Japanese billionaire made a fortune from online commerce. He’s a space enthusiast, and he has already planned an upcoming trip around the moon, in 2023, with space company Elon Musk.

A Russian space station project

Neither Space Adventures nor Roscosmos has disclosed how much Yusaku Maezawa will spend to reserve two of the three seats in the Soyuz capsule. But according to the specialized magazine Forbes, Is well presented in the entourage of billionaires, with a seat costing between 20 and 35 million dollars for eight to twelve days aboard the orbiting station.

In addition to space tourism and cinema, the president of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, has promised to revive his country with a series of ambitious projects. The last of them would be the abandonment of the International Space Station 2025 on the horizon to build a purely Russian space station.

Moscow and Beijing also signed a memorandum of understanding to build a station in orbit or even on the surface of the moon, after Russia decided to close the door to a lunar project in Washington that is highly focused on the United States. None of these projects has a specific budget or timeline yet.