[5] Alexander Misurkin, a veteran of two long-duration missions to the ISS, commanded the Soyuz, which was modified to allow it to be flown by a sole cosmonaut.

For some time, it was speculated that Austrian airline pilot Johanna Maislinger would be one of the tourists, but on 13 May 2021, Space Adventures confirmed that Japanese billionaire, art collector and space enthusiast Yusaku Maezawa had acquired both seats, the other for his production assistant Yozo Hirano.

[6] In July 2021, Space Adventures Moscow Office changed their previous story and said that Maislinger had never had access to the funds she had claimed, and they had never treated her as a serious candidate.

Previous missions took one tourist during either a taxi flight, where Soyuz lifeboats on the ISS were swapped, allowing for about a week-long stay or handover periods between crews, where the tourist would launch with an incoming long-duration crew and land with the outgoing one.

Soon afterward, American company Axiom Space carried out a similar flight with SpaceX, where an Axiom-hired professional astronaut flew with three paying tourists to the ISS on board Crew Dragon Endeavour, on 8–25 April 2022.