MOSCOW, December 22. /TASS/. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his business assistant Yozo Hirano who made a spaceflight aboard the International Space Station (ISS) said at a TASS online press conference that they want to make a spacewalk next time.
"This time, we had no such opportunity but next time I would also like to try it," Maezawa told the online press conference running jointly with Roscosmos and the Cosmonaut Training Center.
For his part, Hirano said that he would take the chance, if it was offered to him.
On the morning of December 20, a Soyuz MS-20 descent module carrying Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, Maezawa and Hirano successfully landed in Kazakhstan. Due to unfavorable weather conditions, helicopters remained grounded in the Kazakh city of Jezkazgan while rescue teams reached the landing site and the descent module on motor vehicles. The evacuation effort involved special search and evacuation transport and later a helicopter flew to the site and airlifted the crewmembers to Jezkazgan where they boarded an An-26 plane to fly first to Karaganda and then to the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow.
Misurkin, Maezawa and Hirano had been on the ISS since December 8. On the same day, an epoch-making news office commenced its work aboard the ISS thanks to a memorandum of cooperation signed between the world-renowned TASS Russian News Agency and Roscosmos on November 17. Under the milestone agreement, Roscosmos cosmonaut, Hero of Russia Alexander Misurkin became the first TASS correspondent in space.
He reported on the space station’s daily routine and communicated with scientists responsible for scientific experiments aboard the orbital outpost. His latest information from space is available to the agency’s readership from TASS' news resources. In addition, his photo and video contributions can be seen on the agency’s website and official social media pages.