is a Japanese space tourist. He flew to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...

Soyuz MS-20 Soyuz MS-20 was a Russian Soyuz spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS) launched on 8 December 2021. Unlike previous Soyuz flights to the ISS, Soyuz MS-20 did not deliver any crew members for an ISS Expedition or serve as a lifebo ...

in December 2021. He flew with Yusaku Maezawa, who paid for both seats; his function was that as a production assistant to Maezawa and to document the flight.

Education and professional activities

Yozo Hirano joined ZOZO, Ltd. after graduating from

Kyoto Prefectural University , or for short, is one of the public universities in Japan. Its campus is located in Nakaragi-cho, Shimogamo, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Jap ...

with a degree in casting director of a photography group. There he became the casting director and the manager of the photography team. There he is now working at Start today division of ZOZO, run by Maezawa, as a film producer. He works for Maezawa's private projects, including filming for Maezawa's YouTube channel. Thus being with Maezawa all the time he was selected for a mission to the ISS, where Yozo will be responsible for filming Maezawa during their stay.

Spaceflight

On May 13, 2021, Space Adventures announced that Yozo Hirano had passed the medical examination and from June 2021, together with Yusaku Maezawa, he began preparations for a

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 ...

trip on the

flight, which launched on December 8, 2021. The duration of the space flight was 12 days. Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin served as the commander. During the flight, Hirano was responsible for documenting the flight of Yusaku Maezawa. On June 15, 2021, the participants of MS-20 presented to the management and staff of the Center at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. Together with Maezawa and Hirano, Shun Ogiso, the Public Relations Manager of the Start Today corporation, also participated in the training, and served as the backup crew member for Hirano.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hirano, Yozo 1985 births Living people Space tourists Japanese astronauts Place of birth missing (living people) Japanese film producers