Updated: 10:45 am, Nov. 4
Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke “Dice-K” Enomoto will be the next private space explorer to visit the International Space Station (ISS), the world’s leading space tourism company Space Adventures, Ltd. announced today.
Enomoto, 34, will be the fourth fare-paying private explorer – and the first from Asia – sent into space by Space Adventures, following Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, and most recently Gregory Olsen, who returned from the ISS last month.
Enomoto’s 10 day expedition, which will include eight days on the ISS, is currently planned for October 2006. Like previous space tourists, Enomoto will travel to the ISS in a Russian Soyuz capsule, and he has already begun his cosmonaut training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia.
“I am proud to be the first private citizen from Japan to begin training for an orbital spaceflight. I hope that by my interest in space exploration many others will be encouraged to learn more about the mysteries of the black sky. For the past 30 years, I have dreamt of seeing our Mother Earth from space,” Enomoto said in a statement.
“We are excited to announce that Dice-K will be the next private space explorer to visit the International Space Station,” said Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures in a written statement. “It will be another proud moment at his launch, not only for Space Adventures, but for Japan as a country. We encourage people from all around the world to explore the final frontier. We congratulate Dice-K and wish him well in his training.”
Enomoto is a self-described fanboy of the popular Japanese anime series “GUNDAM” – a futuristic cartoon where humans wage battle wearing giant robot suits. In previous interviews, Enomoto has said that with Russian approval, he would like to dress up as Char Aznable, a popular Darth Vader-like character on the show.
A former executive vice president and chief strategic officer of the IT company Livedoor and the founder of DICE-K.com, Enomoto now lives in Hong Kong and works as an independent investor.
Space Adventures is headquartered in Arlingtion, Va. with offices in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Moscow, and Tokyo. It is the only company to successfully launch private explorers into space and offers a variety of programs, such as Zero-Gravity and MiG flights, cosmonaut training, spaceflight qualification programs and reservations on future suborbital spacecrafts.
Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke "Dice-K" Enomoto, 34, is set to become the fourth private citizen in space. The Arlington, Virginia-based company "Space Adventures", which specializes in spaceflight-related travel, announced on March 7 that Enomoto was approved by the Russian space agency as a flight candidate.

Enomoto has now passed the physical examinations necessary to be cleared for training, finished the medical preparation, and signed the contract for the flight. His training with the Russian Federal Space Agency will include physical and aeronautical preparation as well as Russian language instruction.

Enomoto will be the first Japanese person to fly to the International Space Station (ISS). His trip, to take place in a Soyuz TMA-9 rocket, is scheduled for September, with a ticket price of US$20 million.

United States entrepreneur Gregory Olsen returned from the ISS in October 2005; previous space vacationers were American Dennis Tito in 2001 and South African Mark Shuttleworth in 2002.