Japan’s space agency JAXA on Tuesday presented new astronaut candidates, Japanese English-language newspapers The Japan Times and The Japan Today reported on February 28.
In the first astronaut selection campaign in 13 years, a World Bank staff member and a surgeon were selected from several thousand applicants. They have the opportunity to join the international mission to the moon.
Makoto Suwa, 46, a World Bank disaster prevention specialist, and Japanese Red Cross Medical Center surgeon Ayu Yoneda, 28, will complete two years of training at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
“I don’t think the journey ahead will be easy, but I hope to fly to the moon,” Yoneda told a news conference in Tokyo, expressing her delight after being selected from more than 4,000 applicants, a record number.
She will be the third female astronaut at JAXA after Chiaki Mukai and Naoko Yamazaki.
Suva, who is the oldest candidate ever selected by JAXA, said he felt “an enormous sense of responsibility” when he joined the online news conference from the United States, where he works. He did not give up despite the failure of the previous astronaut recruitment campaign in 2008.
If they become officially certified astronauts, the two will be able to participate in missions to the International Space Station, as well as the Artemis lunar project.
Japan, a close ally of the United States, is aiming to be the second country after the United States to land an astronaut on the moon, possibly in the second half of the 2020s.
“I’m interested in seeing what the Earth looks like from the Moon during an eclipse,” says Yoneda.
The average age of JAXA astronauts is currently between 52 and 53, with a retirement age of 60, raising concerns about whether there will be enough active duty astronauts when accelerated lunar exploration begins.
Yoneda and Suwa both passed the JAXA exams, which began last April. In total, 4,127 people submitted their applications. The space agency has relaxed many of its entry requirements to attract a wide range of applicants, without experience in related fields.
Eight men and two women passed the final stage of the exams from January to February this year.
Suwa did postgraduate studies at Princeton University, where he studied geosciences, before working in Rwanda as a high school and university teacher with the Overseas Volunteer Program of the Japan International Cooperation Agency and then with the World Meteorological Organization of The United Nations. He currently works in Washington DC at the World Bank as a Senior Disaster Prevention Specialist.
Yoneda graduated from the University of Tokyo School of Medicine in 2019.
Suwa and Yoneda are the first Japanese to be selected as possible astronauts since Norishige Kanai in September 2009. Both candidates showed an interest in space from a very young age.
Suwa remembers as a teenager when she saw the news that Mamoru Mohri had become Japan’s first astronaut to go into space on a space shuttle 30 years ago.
Yoneda wanted to become an astronaut when her father gave her a manga version of astronaut Mukai’s biography as a child.
According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, two more astronauts became astronauts who were the same age as Yoneda (28) during the selection: Koichi Wakata and Naoko Yamazaki.
JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa said that as the world becomes more active in space exploration and scientific research, and people have the opportunity to stay in Earth orbit for longer periods of time, new flights to heaven will expand throughout the world, creating more opportunities. for candidates
Source: Rossa Primavera
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