K-pop artist TOP and DJ Steve Aoki will be two of the eight crew members that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa hopes to send on a trip around the moon as early as next year, riding on one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets, it was announced on Friday.
Following a 12-day stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2017, Maezawa purchased every seat on the first lunar mission, which has been planned since 2018.Maezawa shared his selections on Twitter and at a website he called the #dearMoon Project.
The fashion mogul and his team would fly alongside SpaceX as the moon’s first flyby as commercial companies, like Jeff Bezos Blue Origin, usher in a new era of space travel for affluent customers.
Maezawa, a fellow billionaire, shares Musk’s penchant for promotion and obsession with Twitter. He has boasted of holding the Guinness World Record for the most retweeted post after awarding 100 winners with cash prizes totaling 1 million yen ($7300) for doing so.Maezawa said that 1 million people had applied when he utilised the microblogging site to find eight crew members from all across the world to travel to the moon with him.
Dev Joshi, an Indian actor, was also chosen for the group, which was primarily made up of creative types like artists and photographers. Backup crew members included Japanese dancer Miyu and US Olympian snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington.
Maezawa made his money by launching the internet-based apparel shop Zozo Inc 3092.T, whose largest stakeholder at the moment is Softbank Group Corp’s 9984.T internet company.
