Elon Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, plan to launch a private passenger named Yusaku Maezawa around the moon. He is the first to book a trip as a private passenger with the commercial space company for a voyage that hasn't been attempted since NASA's Apollo missions ended in 1972.

Shares in Tesla have had a turbulent time after the entrepreneur said in a tweet last month that he wanted to take the carmaker private.

"Finally I can tell you that 'I choose to go to the moon, '" Maezawa said, echoing President John F. Kennedy's famous phrase.

"I love art, so I want to see what artists will collaborate on together and see it directly with my eyes", Maezawa said.

"I could not pass up this opportunity to see the moon up close", Maezawa said.

Maezawa will invite six to eight artists of different professional and personal backgrounds - artists who represent the whole of humanity - to join him on the lunar flyby mission... with the only stipulation to their involvement being that they create works thereafter that "inspire the dreamer in all of us".

Musk didn't say how much money was involved in booking the artists' adventure, although he said that it was substantial.

Business Insider will be reporting live from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, as we meet the passenger and as Musk reveals why the person is making the trip. "Please say yes and accept my invitation!"

Musk says the BFR will act more like a sky diver than an airplane.

Musk has previously said he wants the rocket to be ready for an unpiloted trip to Mars in 2022, with a crewed flight in 2024, though his ambitious production targets have been known to slip.

Musk described the first two tests as happening within two to three years, according to the Washington Post, and Maezawa's launch date as sometime in 2023.

It's not 100% certain we can bring this to flight.

Maezawa, whose net worth is estimated at $2.9 billion by Forbes, plans to work with the SpaceX team to select his fellow passengers.

It wasn't revealed how much Maezawa paid for the flight, but Musk did announce that the businessman approached him about the flight.

SpaceX announced September 17 that a Japanese billionaire will be paying an undisclosed but significant sum to buy a flight of the company's next-generation rocket for a flight around the moon carrying a group of artists.

"If I'm going to go to space, I'd rather go as far as I can", he said.

Mr Maezawa made headlines a year ago after paying $110.5m (£85.4m) for a painting by the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat at an auction in NY.

Read everything we know about the BFR and its spaceship design here. Its last rocket, the Falcon Heavy, had its first successful launch almost five years later than planned. The BFR is expected to stand 118 meters high, taller than a Saturn V. SpaceX has said it hopes this rocket will someday carry people to Mars.

About one year after that, in February of this year, SpaceX debuted the long-awaited Falcon Heavy, which became the world's most powerful operational launch vehicle. SpaceX was also supposed to have two paying customers take a trip around the Moon this year, using one of SpaceX's Dragon crew capsules sent aloft by a Falcon Heavy rocket.