大象传媒

On Monday, the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa landed safely back on Earth after a 12-day journey into space.

The journey marked Russia鈥檚 return to space tourism as Maezawa, a space enthusiast, made the trip in a Soyuz spacecraft and became the first space tourist to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) in more than a decade.

Maezawa plans to take eight people with him on a 2023 mission around the moon, operated by Elon Musk鈥檚 SpaceX.

Dmitry Loskutov is the Director General of Glavkosmos, the sister company of Roscosmos, Russia's Space Agency, who are sending tourists into space in partnership with the US company Space Adventures.

"The price is quite competitive... the number is several dozens of millions of dollars. But it's generally less than our competitors."

(Photo: Yusaku Maezawa, Yozo Hirano and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Misurkin as they prepared to board the rocket. Credit: Roscosmos).