Japanese tourists, cosmonaut board space station

A Japanese billionaire and his producer boarded the International Space Station on Wednesday, the first visit by self-paying space tourists to the orbiting outpost in more than a decade.

Fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and producer Yozo Hirano, who plans to film his mission, blasted off for the International Space Station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin. The trio lifted off as scheduled aboard Soyuz MS-20 from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan and successfully docked at the orbiting outpost almost six hours later.  The crew later opened the hatch and moved to the space station from the Soyuz.  They are scheduled to spend 12 days in space. The two are the first self-paying tourists to visit the space station since 2009. The price of the trip hasn't been disclosed.