The Soyuz-2.1a rocket with the Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft, which is set to carry Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa with his assistant Yozo Hirano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin to the International Space Station (ISS), has been launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, a Sputnik correspondent reported on Wednesday
BAIKONUR SPACEPORT (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th December, 2021) The Soyuz-2.1a rocket with the Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft, which is set to carry Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa with his assistant Yozo Hirano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin to the International Space Station (ISS), has been launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, a Sputnik correspondent reported on Wednesday.
The rocket will put the ship on a suborbital trajectory in nine minutes, with the entire flight to the ISS set to take about six hours. Docking of the Soyuz MS-20 with the ISS is expected at 13:41 GMT.
The crew is expected to return to Earth on December 20.
The two Japanese are the first tourists in 12 years to fly to the ISS in a Soyuz spacecraft.
