Japanese Billionaire Announces 8 Artists Who Will Fly To Moon On SpaceX's Starship dearMoon Mission. Here's The List
SpaceX's Starship dearMoon is the first civilian mission to the Moon, and is planned to take off in 2023. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will fly to the Moon along with eight civilians.
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has announced the names of eight artists who will fly with him to the Moon on SpaceX's Starship dearMoon mission. The dearMoon Project is the first civilian mission to the Moon, and is planned to take off in 2023. Maezawa, an online fashion tycoon, will fly to the Moon along with eight civilians SpaceX's Starship. The journey to the Moon and back will last a week.
Maezawa purchased all the seats aboard Starship in 2018. His aim is to give talented individuals the opportunity to fly to the Moon. In March, 2021, he announced his plans to choose eight crew members from across the world.
Maezawa has selected the dearMoon crew members from one million applicants. He confirmed the crew members through his Twitter account.
Who are the eight crew members for dearMoon?
The eight crew members who will be riding along with Maezawa are Steve Aoki, Choi Seung Hyun, also known by the stage name T.O.P., Yemi A.D., Rhiannon Adam, Tim Dodd, Karim Iliya, Brendan Hall, and Dev D. Joshi, according to the official website of dearMoon. The two backup crew members are Kaitlyn Farrington and Miyu.
Steve Aoki is an American DJ and record producer whose studio albums have charted on Billboard. He was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album in 2013.
Choi Seung-hyun is a South Korean rapper, songwriter, singer and actor who performed as an underground rapper before joining the South Korean record label YG Entertainment. In 2006, he debuted as the main rapper for the South Korean boy band Big Bang, which became one of the best-selling groups of all time in Asia and one of the best-selling boy bands in the world.
Seung-hyun made his film debut with 71:Into the Fire in 2010, which won him multiple accolades including the Best New Actor award at the 2010 Blue Dragon Film Awards and the 2011 Baeksang Arts Awards.
He was awarded the New Asian Actor of the Year Award at the Busan International Film Festival for his role in the 2013 South Korean action drama film Commitment.
Yemi A.D. is a Czech choreographer who has worked with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. In 1999, Yemi founded the JAD Dance Company (JAD DC) in Prague, Czech Republic. In 2010, Ye, who was known as Kanye West at that time, hired Yemi to choreograph a sequence in the former's musical short film Runaway.
Rhiannon Adam is an Irish photographic artist whose work is heavily influenced by her nomadic childhood spent at sea, sailing around the world with her parents, according to her official website. Her art focuses on complex narratives relating to climate change, outsider communities, social injustice and abuse of power.
Tim Dodd is an American Youtuber famous for his YouTube channel called Everyday Astronaut. In 2014, started Everyday Astronaut as an art project on Instagram. He took pictures of himself in a Russian high altitude flight suit as part of a viral photo series, which increased his love for spaceflight manifolds.
Since Dodd wanted to reach the word about spaceflight, he launched his YouTube channel in 2017, and decided to work on the platform full time. Now, Everyday Astronaut has over 1,35,000 subscribers. The channel frequently broadcasts major space launch events, including those of SpaceX and NASA.
Karim Iliya is a photographer, filmmaker, and whale swimming guide based in Iceland and Hawaii, who grew up in the Middle East and Asia. According to his official website, he uses photography and videos to show a unique perspective of fascinating places and uncover new underwater worlds. He mainly focuses on documenting whales, birds and other threatened species as part of an effort to advocate for the protection of delicate ecosystems on Earth.
Brendan Hall is a documentary filmmaker who tells the world stories of the natural world and has gone on several interesting adventures, from following a remote medical expedition through the Amazon rainforest, to scientists unearthing woolly mammoth bones in Siberia.
Beginning his career assisting with development at the National Geographic Channel, Hall has travelled the world directing projects for the National Geographic, Google, The Nature Conservancy and Adobe. According to his official website, Hall has also contributed cinematography to feature-length documentaries including Apple TV's Red Heaven and PBS's Bill Nye: Science Guy.
Dev Joshi is an Indian television actor who is famous for portraying the role of Baal Veer in a show of the same name. He is set to be the first Indian travelling to the Moon, and the youngest crew member of the dearMoon Project.
Backup crew member Kaitlyn Farrington is an American former professional snowboarder who won the gold medal in the women's half-pipe competition at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. In 2010, she won the gold medal at the European Winter X Games.
Miyu, another backup crew member on dearMoon, is a Japanese dancer.
When will dearMoon launch?
While the dearMoon mission is planned to be launched in 2023, the launch date may be pushed back, according to US media. This is because Starship has not yet been approved for an orbital journey around Earth. Starship has been grounded at its Starbase launch location in South Texas for more than 18 months because SpaceX awaits the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA's) approval regarding environmental assessment requirements.
Yusaku Maezawa’s spacefaring adventures
On December 8, 2021, Maezawa, his production assistant Yozo Hirano, and veteran Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin launched aboard a Russian-built Soyuz capsule, to the International Space Station (ISS), as part of the Soyuz MS-20 mission.
On December 9, they docked into the Poisk module of the Russian segment of the ISS. The mission marked the first self-funded space tourism mission to the ISS in a decade.
The crew members were not a part of any Expedition on the orbital laboratory. Maezawa and Hirano were two space tourists represented by space tourism company Space Adventures. The mission, which was a collaboration between Russian space agency Roscosmos and Space Adventures, launched from Site 31/6 at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The crew returned to Earth on December 20.
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