JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Expedition 64 astronaut Soichi Noguchi relaxes at the end of the work day inside the seven-windowed cupola, the International Space Station’s “window to the world.” The orbiting lab was flying above the South Pacific at the time this photograph was taken on November 27, 2020.
December will be a busy month as the Expedition 64 gears up for space freighter traffic. On Wednesday, December 2, the entire crew trained for the unlikely event of an emergency on the station. They coordinated with mission controllers around the world practicing their communication, locating safety gear and maneuvering through escape routes. The crew also had the arrival of a new SpaceX Dragon cargo craft on Sunday, December 6.
Soichi Noguchi was born in 1965 in Yokohama, Kanagawa. He received a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering in 1989, master’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering in 1991, Doctor of Philosophy in Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies in 2020, all from the University of Tokyo.
He was selected as an astronaut candidate by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA, currently Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in May 1996 and joined NASDA in June 1996. He completed two years of Astronaut Candidate Training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC), and was qualified for flight assignments aboard the space shuttle as a Mission Specialist (MS) in April 1998. He participated in basic training for Russian manned space systems at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC) in Russia in 1998. He then continued MS advanced training at JSC while working on the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) development tests.
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