August 7 – First Japanese Astronauts Chosen

nPublishednon August 7, 2013

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nOnnthis date in 1985, three Japanese men were chosen as their nation’snfirst astronauts.
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nMamorunMohri is a chemist who worked with materials in vacuums (environments with no air—you know, like outer space!). He has also worked withnengineering of nuclear-fusion projects. He was selected to be anpayload specialist, and he became the first Japanese citizen innspace. He flew in two Space Shuttle missions (in 1992 and 2000), andnserved as chief payload specialist for Spacelab-J.
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nChiakinMukai is a doctor who became the first Japanese woman in space, andnthe first Japanese citizen to have two spaceflights. She flew in twonSpace Shuttle missions (in 1994 and 1998), one of which was anSpacelab mission.
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nTakaonDoi is an aerospace engineer who has studied propulsion systems andnmicrogravity (really, really, really low gravity situations—younknow, like space!). He also flew in two Space Shuttle missions (inn1997 and 2008) and visited the International Space Station. He is thenfirst Japanese astronaut to conduct a spacewalk—and the firstnperson to throw a boomerang in space. (The boomerang was speciallyndesigned to be used in microgravity.)
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nInthink older Americans (like me!) tend to think of spaceflight asnsomething that Russia (or the Soviet Union) and the U.S. does (orndid), and we tend to think of the Space Shuttle as an American thing.nHowever, space exploration is and should be a global effort, andnmultiple nations have worked together, especially recently, on spacenmissions. Also, there is now commercial spaceflight, in which privatencompanies rather than governments fund and design missions, and spacentourism, in which ordinary people, rather than astronauts, visitnouter space.
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nIfnI did my research correctly, in addition to Japanese astronauts,nSpace Shuttle missions included astronauts from Canada, Belgium,nFrance, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Israel,nMexico, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine. Many more nations are representednon Soviet and Russian spaceflights.
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nRightnnow only Russia and China has human spaceflight capability. India,nIran, Japan, and the European Space Agency all have manned missionsnin planning stages. I would love to see America get back in the gamenthat it helped lead for so long!
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nAlsonon this date:
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