ALMATY, Kazakhstan, Dec 20, 2021 (BSS/AFP) - A Japanese billionaire returned
to Earth Monday, Russia's space agency said, after 12 days spent on the
International Space Station where he made videos about performing mundane
tasks in space including brushing teeth and going to the bathroom.

  Online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano
parachuted onto Kazakhstan's steppe at around the expected landing time of
0313 GMT Monday, along with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin.

  "The flight of the "tourist" spacecraft "Soyuz MS-20" has been completed,"
Roscosmos said in a statement on its website, without providing an exact time
for the landing.

  Their journey marked Russia's return to space tourism after a decade-long
pause that saw the rise of competition from the United States.

  The trio spent 12 days on the orbiting laboratory where the Japanese
tourists documented their daily life aboard the ISS for Maezawa's popular
YouTube channel.

  Addressing his one million followers on YouTube, the 46-year-old
billionaire explained how to brush teeth and go to the bathroom in space.

  In one of the videos, he explained in detail the business of relieving
oneself on the ISS.

  "Peeing is very easy," he said as he demonstrated a handheld funnel
astronauts use to suck their urine away.

  In other videos, he showed his followers how to properly drink tea and
sleep in zero gravity.

  When the three space travellers arrived on the ISS on December 8, they
joined a seven-team crew who were engaged in space biology and physics
research.

  Maezawa plans to take eight people with him on a 2023 mission around the
moon, operated by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

  He and his assistant are the first private Japanese citizens to visit space
since journalist Toyohiro Akiyama travelled to the Mir station in 1990.

  - Turning point -

  Their return from space caps a banner year that many have seen as a turning
point for private space travel.

  Billionaires Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson all made breakthrough
commercial tourism flights this year, bursting into a market Russia is keen
to defend.

  Russia has a history of sending self-funded tourists to space.

  In partnership with US-based company Space Adventures, Russian space agency
Roscosmos has previously taken seven tourists to the ISS since 2001 -- one of
them twice.

  The last was Canada's Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberte in 2009,
who was dubbed the first clown in space.

  In October, Russia launched its first untrained cosmonauts into space since
Laliberte's trip, delivering a Russian actress and a director to the ISS,
where they filmed scenes for the first movie in orbit.

  Moscow had stopped sending tourists to space after NASA retired its Space
Shuttle in 2011, which left Russia with a monopoly on supplying the ISS.

  NASA bought up all Soyuz launch seats for a reported $90 million (80
million euros) per spot -- effectively ending tourist flights.

  That changed last year when a SpaceX spacecraft successfully delivered its
first astronauts to the ISS.

  NASA began purchasing flights from SpaceX, stripping Russia of its monopoly
and costing its cash-strapped space agency millions of dollars in revenue.

  While the cost of tickets to space for tourists has not been disclosed,
Space Adventures has indicated they are in the range of $50-60 million.

  Roscosmos plans to continue growing its space tourism business, already
commissioning two Soyuz rockets for such trips.