Japan’s most eye-catching astronaut

Forty years ago, this week, Japan nominated three people – Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai as the country’s first astronaut candidates. To celebrate this milestone, we are doing our latest 7 liststart with a man who is not actually a professional astronaut. Still, since he was the first Japanese to go to space and with a very interesting story, he was worth it.

Toyohiro Akiyama

Toyohiro Akiyama, a TV chain journalist without a scientific or engineering background in the late 1940s, did not seem to be the ideal candidate to become the first Japanese in space. However, that didn’t bother TBS. Japanese TV hopes to increase ratings by broadcasting something unconventional. The idea raised by the executive was to pay one of his employees to join the SOYUZ TM-11 expedition to head to the Russian space station Mir. The company has applied for more than 150 people.

Akiyama was selected along with photographer Ryoko Kikuchi, who was supposed to be a member of a Littleman team. She then had an appendicitis case a week before the launch, leaving Akiyama without backup. He received more than a year of training, during which time he gave up his daily habit of cigarettes for four. Before rising, he was asked what he most expected when he came back. “I can’t wait to smoke.” reply. After the flight, it was reported that his crew members explain They “never seen a person vomit.”

Mamoru Mohri

Akiyama may have been there before him, but Mamoru Mohri will always hold the title of Japan’s first professional astronaut in space. The Hokkaido native was a member of the 1992 STS-47 mission crew and served as Spacelab-J’s chief payload expert. He joined six other astronauts, including Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to arrive in space, Mark C.

During the first space trip, Mohri conducted experiments, which were part of a collaboration with NHK, televised to students in Japan. Speech TW He said in 2001 that this was his way of respecting his teacher Christa McAuliffe, who boarded the 73-second flight challenger in 1986 at the Space Shuttle Challenger. Mohri then joined the STS-99 crew for the second time on the first shuttle mission in the 21st century.

chiaki mukai

In 1983, the same year she was appointed chief resident of cardiovascular surgery at Chiaki Mukai at Keio University Hospital, read newspaper articles about the Japan Space Agency (now known as Jaxa), and recruited scientists to conduct space shuttle experiments. On the 1988 US Space Shuttle. Although she became a doctor since childhood, her dreams were inspired by her astronauts, she has long been fascinated by space, such as Yuri Gagarin, who was like Yuri Gagarin orbiting the Earth astronauts and Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.

Mukai was elected as a reserve member in 1988. Six years later, she joined the STS-65 mission on Columbia, becoming the first Japanese woman to fly to space. She conducted experiments related to life sciences and space medicine. Her second voyage was discovered in 1998 as part of a STS-95 mission, which made her the first Japanese citizen to venture into space twice. In the same flight, U.S. Senator John Glenn was the first astronaut to orbit the earth. Mukai spent a total of 23 days in space.

doi

Takao doi received Boomerang from Yasuhiro Togai before joining the STS-123 mission on the shuttle effort in March 2008. The world boomerang champion at the time, Togai wanted him to throw a wooden object into space to see if it would return. DOI complied with requests within the International Space Station (ISS). Boomerang returned to him. While talking to your wife during a mission, doi explain“I was so surprised and then saw it flying like it was on Earth.”

That was Doe’s second mission. His first was on the Columbia Space Shuttle in 1997 as part of the STS-87 crew. During that expedition, he became the first Japanese astronaut to conduct EVA (also known as Space Walk) for EVA. Doi and Winston Scott conducted two space walks, totaling 12 hours and 43 minutes. During their first spacewalk, they manually captured a broken Spartan satellite. DOI retired from astronaut in 2009. Earlier this year, he was appointed as a visiting professor at Ryukoku University in Kyoto.

Koichi Wakata

No Japanese astronauts spend time in space like Koichi Wakata. Omia-born scientists, who retired from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), accumulated 504 days in orbit in five space missions, 18 hours and 35 minutes. His first flight was in 1996 as part of the STS-72 space shuttle mission. He operated the shuttle’s robot arm to retrieve the space flyer unit – a Japanese satellite launched a few months ago.

Between November 2013 and May 2014, Wakata spent 188 consecutive days in space, serving as the crew of Soyuz TMA-11M-11M and ISS Expeditions 38 and 39. For Expedition 39, he became the first Japanese astronaut to supervise a manned space mission. He is also a third person outside NASA, or the Russian Space Agency commands the ISS. Wakata performs duties with the Japanese flag explain He “has a constant feeling of what everyone expects in Japan.”

Noguchi’s soichi

Following in the footsteps of John Young and Wally Schirra, Soichi Noguchi became the third astronaut and the first non-American, and when he joined the Crew 1 mission, he joined three different types of spacecraft, the wealthy crew returned to the crew of the crew for another six months in November 2020, the Spacex crew pilot and the June keart. Rubins all conducted their fourth professional spacewalk. The three spaceways before Noguchi were conducted during the 2005 STS-114 mission to help with the maintenance of the space station.

It was the first return flight mission after the Colombian tragedy, when seven astronauts died. This is also Noguchi’s first space trip. His second was in December 2009, when he boarded the Russian Soyuz spacecraft (21 years old) as part of Expedition 22. In 2012, Noguchi expressed himself in two episodes of the pop anime series Space Brothers ((Uchu Kyodai). Eight years later, he stepped down from his astronaut role and became honorary director of the Yokohama Kunos Museum.

Naoko Yamazaki

In an interview with TW in 2020, Yamazaki said she began considering her career as an astronaut after watching the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster – killing seven crew members on TV in 1986. She was only 15 years old at the time, but it had a great impact on her. “I remember it’s not science fiction,” she explain. “The people who died in disaster are real. I thought for the first time that I wanted to be part of the future space program.”

Yamazaki was certified astronaut in 2001 and joined the STS-131 mission in 2010, becoming the second Japanese woman to fly to space. This marks the first time that four women live in space at the same time, the Japanese mother has flew to space. “It’s a roller coaster,” she told TW. “When I approached the window, I saw the earth above my head. It shone and reflected the sunrise, it looked alive. It was simply breathtaking.”

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