Japanese billionaire space tourist returns to earth after 12-day stay on ISS

Independent 

A Japanese billionaire and his production assistant have returned to Earth after spending 12 days aboard the International Space Station as the first self-funded space tourists to visit the orbiting outpost in more than a decade.

The capsule carrying Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, along with the space flight participants – online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano – landed on Earth around 10.1pm EST on Sunday (3.13am GMT on Monday) in Kazakhstan, Nasa noted in a statement.

“The flight of the ‘tourist’ spacecraft Soyuz MS-20 has been completed,” the Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos said in a statement.

The trio spent 12 days on the ISS, where the Japanese tourists documented their daily life aboard the ISS for Mr Maezawa’s YouTube channel.

Mr Hirano also participated in research designed to increase the understanding of the impact of spaceflight on the human body with important biomedical data collected before launch…