Accordingly US private space firm SpaceX has announced that the company's first private passenger to the Moon will be Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. SpaceX tweeted "The first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) is fashion innovator and globally recognized art curator Yusaku Maezawa”. Meanwhile Maezawa, 42, is the founder and CEO of Zozo, the largest online fashion retailer in Japan.
Reports added Maezawa is also known as an contemporary art collector and curator with a large collection at his Contemporary Art Foundation in Tokyo, which features works of various renowned painters like Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Furthermore Maezawa announced on his Twitter and Instagram accounts that he plans to take a select group of artists with him on his trip around the moon saying "He chooses to go to the Moon, with artists," adding then "What will they see ? What will they feel? And what will they create?"
Moreover according to Forbes, Maezawa is the 18th
richest man in Japan with a fortune of $2.9 billion. Hence Maezawa's trip to
the moon will be made on board a BFR, which is currently still in development.
Further the Moon is about 385,000 km away from Earth and the last time an
astronaut travelled there was in 1972 as part of the Apollo 17 mission. Media
reports added SpaceX will ferry four NASA astronauts to space in 2019 with its
Crew Dragon or Dragon 2 spacecraft.