dearMoon project
Cancelled crewed circumlunar mission and art project / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The dearMoon project was a lunar tourism mission and art project conceived and financed by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. It was to make use of a SpaceX Starship spacecraft on a private spaceflight flying a single circumlunar trajectory around the Moon. The passengers would have been Maezawa and eight other civilians. The project was unveiled in September 2018 and was scheduled to launch in 2023.[4] It was later indefinitely delayed until Starship completed development and then fully cancelled in June of 2024. The project objective was to have eight passengers travel with Maezawa for free around the Moon on a six-day tour. Maezawa said that they expected the experience of space tourism to inspire the accompanying passengers in the creation of something new. If successful, the art would have been exhibited some time after returning to Earth with the goal of promoting peace around the world.
This article needs to be updated. (April 2024) |
Mission type | Crewed lunar flyby |
---|---|
Operator | SpaceX |
Website | dearmoon |
Mission duration | 6 days (planned) |
Spacecraft properties | |
Spacecraft type | Starship[1][2] |
Manufacturer | SpaceX |
Crew | |
Crew size | 9 |
Members | Yusaku Maezawa Steve Aoki Choi Seung Hyun Yemi A.D. Rhiannon Adam Tim Dodd Karim Iliya Brendan Hall Dev Joshi |
Start of mission | |
Rocket | SpaceX Starship[3] |
End of mission | |
Landing site | SpaceX Starbase, Texas |
dearMoon project insignia |
Maezawa had previously contracted in 2017 with SpaceX for a lunar flyby in a much smaller Dragon 2 spacecraft launched by a Falcon Heavy 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.[3]
The program was scrapped on 1 June 2024.[5]