Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Astronaut Takuya Onishi is “excited” to be officially part of Expedition 72. He has spent around 113 days in space as a flight engineer aboard the ISS as part of Expeditions 48 and 49. The Crew-10 team including Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov arrived at the International Space Station. The Crew-10 team will replace astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmor at the ISS.
VIDEO | Crew-10 team – which includes NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov – arrives at International Space Station. The Crew-10 team will replace astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry… pic.twitter.com/sHr0FXmZIA
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) March 16, 2025
In 2016, Takuya manoeuvred the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) and became the first Japanese astronaut to capture the Cygnus spacecraft in space.
Who Is Takuya Onishi?
Takuya was born in 1975 and was selected as an astronaut in 2009. Before joining JAXA, he was a pilot for All Nippon Airways, accumulating over 3,700 flight hours flying the Boeing 767. This was the second mission to space, following his previously successful mission with JAXA.
Onishi left for space on Friday along with three foreign crew members on his mission aboard a SpaceX rocket launched from Florida.
According to Arab News, quoting JIJI Press, Onishi, who is on his first flight to space since 2016, will stay in the ISS for about half a year. He will serve as ISS commander in the latter half of his mission, taking charge of the overall ISS operations and the safety of the crew members.
He will be the third Japanese ISS commander after Koichi Wakata and Akihiko Hoshide.
During his stay, he will conduct several experiments mainly in Japan’s experiment module Kibo. He will also examine how the microgravity environment affects the efficacy of a cancer therapeutic drug in fruit flies with generic mutations for pancreatic cancer.
