According to the below press release, a Japanese entrepreneur will be heading toward the International Space Station some time in September; no word on the exact date. A woman, Anousheh Ansari, has joined the backup crew. There is also no news on if she will be traveling in her own right at a later time.


Space Adventures, Ltd., the world's leading space experiences company, announced today that Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke 'Dice-K' Enomoto has been confirmed to the Soyuz TMA-9 crew which is currently planned to launch to the International Space Station this September from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Mr. Enomoto will be joining the 14th Expedition Crew which will also include NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin.

"We offer our sincere congratulations to Dice-K for being named to the Soyuz TMA-9 crew. Space Adventures' staff strives, with each of our orbital spaceflight candidates, to assist them in preparing themselves for spaceflight," said Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures. "Dice-K is now even closer to achieving his goal of spaceflight. We wish him the best as he continues his training and begins the preparations for launch."

The backup crew named to support the Soyuz TMA-9 mission includes Ansari X-Prize title sponsor, Anousheh Ansari, who would become the world’s first female spaceflight participant, if required, along with NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.

Space Adventures, the only company to have successfully launched private explorers to space, is headquartered in Vienna, 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 jet flights, cosmonaut training, spaceflight qualification programs and reservations on future suborbital spacecrafts. The company's advisory board includes Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, Shuttle astronauts Sam Durrance, Robert Gibson, Tom Jones, Byron Lichtenberg, Norm Thagard, Kathy Thornton, Pierre Thuot, Yuri Usachev, Charles Walker and Skylab astronaut Owen Garriott.