<p>CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The Japanese fashion tycoon who’s booked a SpaceX ride to the moon is going to try out the International Space Station first. </p>
<p>"Going to the ISS before the Moon," Yusaku Maezawa <a href="https://twitter.com/yousuckmz">announced </a> Thursday via Twitter.</p>
<p>Maezawa has bought two seats on a Russian Soyuz capsule. He’ll blast off in December on the 12-day mission with his production assistant and a professional cosmonaut. </p>
<p>“I’m so curious, ‘What’s life like in space?’ So, I am planning to find out on my own and share with the world,” Maezawa said in a statement.</p>
<p>He’ll be the first person to pay his own way to the space station in more than a decade, according to Virginia-based Space Adventures, which brokered the deal. A Space Adventures spokeswoman declined to divulge the cost. The company has sent seven other tourists to the space station, from 2001 to 2009. </p>
<p>Maezawa’s trip to the moon aboard Elon Musk’s Starship is tentatively scheduled for 2023. He’ll fly around the moon — not land — with eight contest winners.</p>
<p>Maezawa, 45, who founded an online retail clothing business, will be joined by photographer and assistant Yozo Hirano. They will be escorted by Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, who’s spent nearly a year aboard the space station on two separate missions. The launch is scheduled for Dec. 8 from Kazakhstan. </p>
<p>Thursday’s announcement comes amid a flurry of private space initiatives.</p>
<p>The Russian Space Agency announced Thursday that a Russian actress and movie director will launch to the space station in October for filming. The movie is tentatively titled “Challenge.”</p>
<p>In January, the first private mission to the space station from the U.S. will bring three businessmen — from the U.S., Canada and Israel — who are paying about $55 million apiece. They will launch aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule from Kennedy Space Center and will be accompanied by a former NASA astronaut who now works for Houston-based Axiom Space, which arranged the deal. The company plans about two private missions to the space station a year.</p>
<p>Before the space station visits, SpaceX will launch its first private spaceflight with four people on board.</p>
<p>“This is truly a renaissance in human spaceflight," NASA’s director of commercial spaceflight, Phil McAlister, told reporters Monday. “I think that is the perfect word for what we’re experiencing.”</p>
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