Japanese billionaire entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa spoke at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
Michael Sheets | CNBC
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has canceled his Dear Moon mission, which would have been the first private mission to orbit the moon, the plan announced on Saturday.
The mission said in a statement on its website that the team’s initial goal was to complete a mission around the moon with a celebrity on board by the end of last year, but that plan was “not feasible.”
“With no clear timetable certainty in the short term, Maezawa Yusaku made this decision with a heavy heart. inevitable decision Cancellation of the project,” it said. “To all those who supported the project and looked forward to this effort, we sincerely express our gratitude and apologize for this outcome.
In a separate post on the mission website, Maezawa said the reason for the cancellation was uncertainty over project development, saying he signed the contract in 2018 assuming the launch would take place in late 2023.
“This is a development project, so that’s what it is, but when Starship will launch is still uncertain,” Maezawa said.
“I am unable to plan for my future under these circumstances and I feel bad about making the crew wait longer, so the difficult decision to cancel has been made at this time.”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has named Maezawa, the founder of Japanese online fashion store Zozo Inc, as its first private passenger in 2018.
Three years later, he blasted off aboard a Soyuz rocket and became the first private passenger to visit the International Space Station in more than a decade.
In 2022, Maezawa announced that Korean pop star TOP and DJ Steve Aoki would be one of the eight crew members he planned to fly on the DearMoon mission.
In November, he said the flyby mission would be Delay Until this year or later.
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