Defense
SpaceX
Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa.
Elon Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, revealed on Monday that the first private person to ever fly around the moon will be Japanese entrepreneur and billionaire named Yusaku Maezawa.
Maezawa revealed that he had purchased all the seats on the first crewed flight of SpaceX's new Big Falcon Rocket that is being designed to colonize Mars, and has decided to select six to eight artists to accompany him on the journey, though they have not yet been selected.
He says the artists will be part of a project called #dearmoon, which will involve them creating work inspired by their lunar journey.
It's unclear how much the moon's first space tourist paid for access to the lunar flight, though SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said Maezawa is "paying a lot of money that would help with the ship and its booster."
"He's ultimately paying for the average citizen to travel to other planets."
Here's what we know about the man who could be part of the space travel revolution.