Use wechat scan QR code to share with friends and circle of friends < / P > < p > < p > < p > news on July 16, some time in 2023, Japanese billionaire youzuo Maezawa will take off with eight other people in the SpaceX spaceship of the US space exploration technology company to carry out the mission of circling the moon called "dearmoon". Yoshiro Maezawa provided an update on the project on Thursday, saying more than one million people have applied to fly with him p> < p > Figure 1: Japanese billionaire youzuo Maezawa will fly around the moon by SpaceX in 2023 < / P > < p > in order to realize his space dream, youzuo Maezawa paid an unknown amount to SpaceX. He plans to turn the dearmoon project into a folk art project, but it's not clear who he will choose to fly with. This task has changed a lot since the dearmoon project was first announced in 2018. Yoshiro Maezawa had planned to invite a number of artists to board the spaceship and take an adventure tour around the moon with them p> < p > but earlier this year, Maezawa changed his mind and decided to open it to almost everyone, calling on interested lunar explorers to register for starship tickets, and then making videos to explain why they want to go to space. On Thursday, he provided the latest information about some of the applicants, some of whom were shocked by their videos. He said more than a million people had submitted applications, coming from "almost every country" around the world p> < p > Figure 2: rendering of SpaceX spacecraft flying around the moon < / P > < p > these applicants have different backgrounds, including professional ballet dancers, actors, Pulitzer Prize winners, artists and Olympic athletes, as well as internationally famous DJ and musician Steve Aoki. The final candidate has not yet been officially determined, and it is not clear when the list will be announced. But for the first time, there are signs of who has the chance to take part in the tour p> < p > before March 2021, yoshizuo Maezawa launched a "blind date" TV program, focusing on finding a girlfriend who can take him on a mission to the moon. But after strong online opposition, Yoshiro Maezawa canceled the project p> < p > Richard Branson, the British billionaire, recently entered the edge of space in his Virgin Galactic spaceship. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is about to take off from the earth. However, critics of the so-called "billionaire space race" say that these tasks are "vanity projects" and useless in science( Small) < / P > < p >