Aki Hoshide

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Aki Hoshide in the Cupola observatory of the International Space Station during rendezvous operations with the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-3) in 2012.

Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide was born in 1968 in Tokyo and graduated in 1992 with a Master’s in science and aerospace engineering. He was involved in developing the Japanese H-II rocket and worked as an astronaut support engineer from 1994 to 1999. Aki completed his basic astronaut training programme in 1999 and became a certified Soyuz flight engineer in 2004.

Aki has extensive spaceflight experience, with two missions to the International Space Station: in 2007 on Space Shuttle Discovery to help install Japan’s Kibo laboratory, returning to space in 2012 on Soyuz TMA-05M. He has spent 140 days in space and conducted three spacewalks.

Aki was also a commander for NASA’s NEEMO underwater astronaut training course in 2014, working alongside ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet.