The Dear Moon: SpaceX Mission Around the Moon to Join Artists, Writers and Creatives on a Space Experiment with the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa
On Thursday, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa announced the selection of an eight-person crew who will join him on a SpaceX mission around the Moon. Maezawa’s dearMoon mission aims to be the first private mission around the Moon, carrying artists and creatives on a SpaceX Starship.
The responsibility that comes with leaving the Earth, traveling to the moon and back, is something Maezawa hopes every person will understand in the video. “They will gain a lot from this experience, and I hope they will use that to contribute to the planet, to humanity.”
Joining Maezawa, Aoki and Dodd will be Czech multidisciplinary artist Yemi A.D., Irish photographer Rhiannon Adam, photographer Karim Iliya, Indian actor Dev Joshi, documentary filmmaker Brendan Hall and South Korean rapper Choi Seung Hyun, who goes by the stage name T.O.P.
The mission has a launch date of in the fall of 1943. However, the rocket has not yet made an orbital flight test off Earth, one of the many important tests it still needs to complete before it launches with humans on board.
According to the mission website, applicants should be willing to support and help other people in some way if they are selected to go into space with Maezawa.
At one point last year, Maezawa said he was going to use a dating show to find a life partner that he could join him on his journey. But he later canceled those plans, saying he had “mixed feelings” about participating in the endeavor.
The SpaceX Dear Moon Mission and the Maezawa-Axiom Mission 1 (also known as Ax-1) Space Tourism Mission
The company has testing facilities in South Texas that are used for Starship rocket development. The company has conducted a few prototypes and tested some of them, however it hasn’t tested Super Heavy, the gargantuan rocket booster that will be needed to propel the larger 190-foot (50-meter) vehicle. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said for months that it’ll be prepared to conduct the test soon, though the company is still waiting on a launch license from federal regulators.
If the Dear Moon mission gets off the ground, Maezawa’s crew might be the first group of private citizens to venture beyond low- Earth orbit.
There are eight people on the crew, including an electronic dance Mafia DJ, two photographers, a documentary filmmaker, and a YouTube personality.
The dearMoon mission is one of the ventures by the company. The Inspiration4 mission carried a private crew into orbit in 2021. In April, the Axiom Mission 1 (also called Ax-1) sent one commercial astronaut and three civilians to the ISS in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. It was supposedly for $55 million per person to seat on the mission to make space more accessible to everyone.
The Maezawa-led mission focuses on the arts instead of scientific research, which is different from the previous space tourism missions. The members of the crew said there was a strong public outreach element. In the video he made on the crew selection, Tim Dodd said that his work could involve livestreams as well as videos and he hoped that his contribution would help people appreciate the magnificence of our small existence in the universe.