Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa blasted off to the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday in his first space flight, a voyage he sees as a dry-run for his planned trip around the moon with Elon Musk's SpaceX in 2023.
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying the 46-year-old fashion magnate and art collector successfully launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and will reach the ISS in about six hours, Russian space agency Roscosmos said.
On his 12-day journey into space, Maezawa is being accompanied by his assistant Yozo Hirano, who will document the journey, as well as Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin.
Maezawa, the first Japanese tourist to visit the ISS, is also set to become the first private passenger on the SpaceX moon trip, as commercial firms such as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin usher in a new age of space travel for wealthy clients.
Maezawa has already begun searching for eight people to join him on his 2023 moon voyage, requiring applicants to pass medical tests and an interview.
Israeli troops and tanks pushed on Saturday into parts of a congested northern Gaza Strip district that they had previously skirted in the more than seven-month-old war, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, medics and residents said.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is no longer in immediate danger but still in a serious condition, his deputy said on Sunday, four days after an assassination attempt that sent shockwaves through Europe.
At least 47 people have died after continued heavy rain and flooding in northern Afghanistan, an official said on Sunday, a day after a similar number were killed in a central province.
Russian airstrikes killed at least ten people and injured many others in a recreation area just outside Ukraine's northeastern city of Kharkiv on Sunday, local officials said.