The ''dearMoon'' project is a lunar tourism mission and art project conceived and financed by Japanese billionaire

Yusaku Maezawa is a Japanese billionaire entrepreneur and art collector. He founded Start Today in 1998 and launched the online fashion retail website Zozotown in 2004, now Japan's largest. Most recently, Maezawa introduced a custom-fit apparel brand ZOZO and ...

. It will make use of a

SpaceX Starship Starship is a fully reusable, super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX, an American aerospace company. With more than twice the thrust of the Saturn V, it is designed to be the most powerful launch vehicle ever built and the ...

spacecraft on a

private spaceflight Private spaceflight is spaceflight or the development of spaceflight technology that is conducted and paid for by an entity other than a government agency. In the early decades of the Space Age, the government space agencies of the Soviet Un ...

flying a single

circumlunar trajectory In orbital mechanics, a circumlunar trajectory, trans-lunar trajectory or lunar free return is a type of free return trajectory which takes a spacecraft from Earth, around the far side of the Moon, and back to Earth using only gravity once ...

around the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

. The passengers will be Maezawa and eight other civilians, and there may be one or two crew members. The project was unveiled in September 2018 and was scheduled to launch in 2023. The project objective is to have eight passengers travel with Maezawa for free around the Moon on a six-day tour. Maezawa expects that the experience of

space tourism Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. During the period from 2001 to 2009, seven space tourists made eight s ...

will inspire the accompanying passengers in the creation of something new. The art would be exhibited some time after returning to Earth to help promote peace around the world. Maezawa had previously contracted in 2017 with SpaceX for a lunar flyby in a much smaller Dragon 2 spacecraft launched by a

Falcon Heavy Falcon Heavy is a partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle that is produced by SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer. The rocket consists of two strap-on boosters made from Falcon 9 first stages, a center core also made from a Falc ...

launch vehicle, which would have carried only two passengers. According to a SpaceX announcement in early 2018, the Falcon Heavy plan was shelved in light of the development of Starship.

History

On February 27, 2017, SpaceX announced that they were planning to fly two space tourists on a

free-return trajectory In orbital mechanics, a free-return trajectory is a trajectory of a spacecraft traveling away from a primary body (for example, the Earth) where gravity due to a secondary body (for example, the Moon) causes the spacecraft to return to the primar ...

around the

, now known to be billionaire

, and one friend.How SpaceX's 1st Passenger Flight Around the Moon with Yusaku Maezawa Will Work
. Tariq Malik, ''Space.com''. 18 September 2018. This mission, which would have launched in late 2018, was planned to use the Crew Dragon 2 capsule already developed under contract for

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

Commercial Crew Program The Commercial Crew Program (CCP) provides commercially-operated crew transportation service to and from the International Space Station (ISS) under contract to NASA, conducting crew rotations between the expeditions of the International S ...

and launched via a

rocket. As well as being a source of income for the company, any mission would serve as technology development for SpaceX's further plans to colonize Mars. At the time of the 2017 announcement, the Crew Dragon 2 capsule was still under development and the Falcon Heavy had yet to fly. Industry analysts noted that the schedule proposed by SpaceX might be too ambitious, as the capsule was expected to need modifications to handle differences in flight profile between the proposed lunar flight and its main use for crew transfer to space stations orbiting Earth. In February 2018, SpaceX announced it no longer had plans to certify the Falcon Heavy for human spaceflight and that lunar missions would be flown on Starship (then called ''BFR''). Then, on September 14, 2018, SpaceX announced that the previously contracted passenger would be launched aboard Starship to flyby the Moon in 2023. Starship will have a pressurized volume of , large common areas, central storage, a galley, and a solar storm shelter.

Crew

The project was announced in 2018 with the original intent to bring a crew of artists to the Moon. In this latest release, Maezawa calls for applicants to make up a crew of eight individuals from around the world for the week-long lunar trip. On February 7, 2019, the ''dearMoon'' YouTube channel posted a video in which Maezawa discusses the movie ''First Man'' with director Damien Chazelle and lead actor Ryan Gosling. In the video, Maezawa officially invites Chazelle to come with him on his ''dearMoon project'', making Chazelle the first person to be publicly invited to go. However, Chazelle answered that he had to think about it and discuss it with his wife. On March 3, 2021,

announced that eight members of the public will be selected to fly on ''dearMoon''. On July 16, 2021, Yuzaku Maezawa uploaded a video that reveals 1 million people have joined, but there was still no information on who won the 8 seats. On December 8, 2022, the crew of the mission was announced, along with two backup crew members. ;Primary Crew ;Backup Crew

Objective

The ''dearMoon project'' passengers will be

and eight accomplished artists that Maezawa has invited to travel with him for free. Maezawa expects this flight to inspire the artists in their creation of new art, which will be presented some time after their return to Earth. He hopes this project will help promote peace around the world.

Mission profile

Initially proposed to launch in 2023, the

circumlunar In orbital mechanics, a circumlunar trajectory, trans-lunar trajectory or lunar free return is a type of free return trajectory which takes a spacecraft from Earth, around the far side of the Moon, and back to Earth using only gravity once ...

mission is expected to take 6 days to complete. In 1970, Apollo 13 followed a similar trajectory around the Moon. During the 2020s NASA's Artemis 2 is expected to launch on similar trajectories, while Artemis 1 entered a

distant retrograde orbit A distant retrograde orbit (DRO), as most commonly conceived, is a spacecraft orbit around a moon>M2>>M3. So DRO is a general three-body problem solution. It's just that most practical near-term uses for the concept at three-body problems in our S ...

around the Moon for 6 days."The Ins and Outs of NASA's First Launch of SLS and Orion"
NASA. November 27, 2015
Archived
from the original on February 22, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2022. The circumlunar Artemis 2 mission is planned to be crewed and to be launched in 2024.NASA Outlines Challenges, Progress for Artemis Moon Missions
/ref>

References

External links