World’s First Japanese Private Space Explorer Trains in Preparation for His Mission to the International Space Station Planned for September
Space Adventures, Ltd., the world’s leading space experiences company, announced today that Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke Enomoto (Dice-K) has been certified as an orbital spaceflight candidate after receiving Government Medical Committee approval from the Russian Federal Space Agency (FSA) to commence cosmonaut training. The company, which organized the flights for the world’s first private space explorers, also announced that the final contract for Dice-K’s flight on Soyuz TMA-9 in route to the International Space Station (ISS) has been signed. His expedition is currently planned for September 2006.
The first phase of training will include cosmonaut theoretical and physical training, along with Russian language tutoring. In 2001, Space Adventures enabled Californian Dennis Tito, to realize his dream of spaceflight followed by South African Mark Shuttleworth in 2002 and then in 2005, Gregory Olsen from New Jersey became the world’s third private space explorer. Dice-K will be Japan’s first spaceflight participant to visit the ISS.
“We, at Space Adventures, are proud to announce the commencement of Dice- K’s orbital spaceflight training,” said Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, Ltd. “We look forward to his launch in September when his dream of spaceflight will be realized and we hope and trust that he will be an inspiration to others around the world to pursue their own dreams of spaceflight.”
Space Adventures, the only company to have successfully launched private explorers to space, is headquartered in Arlington, Va. with offices in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Moscow and Tokyo. It offers a variety of programs such as the availability today for orbital spaceflight missions to the International Space Station, commercial missions around the moon, Zero-Gravity and MiG flights, cosmonaut training, spaceflight qualification programs and reservations on future suborbital spacecrafts. The company’s advisory board comprises Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, Shuttle astronauts Kathy Thornton, Robert (Hoot) Gibson, Charles Walker, Norm Thagard, Sam Durrance, Byron Lichtenberg, Pierre Thuot and Skylab astronaut Owen Garriott. For more information, please visit http://www.spaceadventures.com.
