Date of Birth: Aug. 1, 1963
Age: 63
Koichi Wakata (若田 光一 Wakata Kōichi, born 1 August 1963) is a Japanese engineer and a JAXA astronaut. Wakata is a veteran of four NASA Space Shuttle missions, a Russian Soyuz mission, and a long-duration stay on the International Space Station. During a nearly two-decade career in spaceflight, he has logged more than eleven months in space. During Expedition 39, he became the first Japanese commander of the International Space Station. Wakata flew on the Soyuz TMA-11M/Expedition 38/Expedition 39 long duration spaceflight from 7 November 2013 to 13 May 2014. During this spaceflight he was accompanied by Kirobo, the first humanoid robot astronaut.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is Japan's national aero-space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and the launch of satellites into orbit, and is involved in many more advanced missions, such as asteroid exploration and possible manned exploration of the Moon. JAXA launch their Epsilon vehicle from the Uchinoura Space Center and their H-II vehicles from the Tanegashima Space Center.
14th test flight of the two-stage Starship launch vehicle. 3rd flight of Starship V3 and the first Starship flight to deploy satellites (a group of S…
A classified mission for the United States Space Force. It is possibly a batch of classified LEO satellites based on SpaceX’s Starshield satellite bu…
Synthetic aperture radar satellite for Japanese Earth imaging company Synspective.
3 Chinese reconnaissance satellites of unknown purposes, officially reported as for "Electromagnetic environment probing".
A batch of 9 Low Earth Orbit communication satellites for the Chinese state owned SatNet constellation operated by the China Satellite Network Group.…