Koichi Wakata
Koichi Wakata (born 1 August 1963) is a Japanese engineer and a JAXA astronaut. Wakata is a veteran of four NASA Space Shuttle missions and a long-duration stay on the International Space Station. During a nearly two decade career in spaceflight he has logged five months in space. Wakata was selected by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) (now JAXA) as an astronaut candidate in 1992. In December 2000, he became a NASA robotics instructor astronaut. In July 2006, he served as the commander of the 10th NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) mission, a seven-day undersea expedition at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationâs Aquarius laboratory located off the coast of Florida. In August 2006, he started flight engineer training for Russian Soyuz spacecraft in preparation for a long duration stay on the ISS.
Spaceflights
No. Mission Position Time Duration
1 STS-72 MSP 11.01. - 20.01.1996 8d 22h 01m
2 STS-92 MSP 11.10. - 24.10.2000 12d 21h 43m
3 STS-119 / ISS-18 / ISS-19 / ISS-20 / STS-127 Flight Engineer 15.03. - 31.07.2009 137d 15h 05m
Total 159d 10h 49m
