Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

This astronaut visited the International Space Station.

ISS Visitor

This astronaut crossed the Kármán Line (100 km), the internationally accepted boundary of space.

Crossed Kármán Line

This astronaut has spent over a month in space.

Space Resident

Takuya Onishi was born in 1975 in Tokyo, Japan. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Tokyo in March 1998. Following his graduation, Onishi joined All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd. (ANA) in April 1998, where he served as a co-pilot on Boeing 767 aircraft, accumulating over 3,700 flight hours. In February 2009, he was selected by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) as an astronaut candidate and completed his basic training by July 2011, earning certification as an International Space Station (ISS) astronaut.

Onishi’s first spaceflight was as a flight engineer for ISS Expeditions 48 and 49 from July to October 2016, during which he spent approximately 115 days in space after launching aboard the Soyuz capsule, contributing to various scientific experiments and maintenance tasks. After this mission, he became a certified JAXA flight director in January 2020, leading operations for the Kibo module from JAXA’s Mission Control in Tsukuba, Japan. In November 2023, Onishi was assigned as a mission specialist for NASA’s upcoming SpaceX Crew-10 mission.

SpaceX Crew-10

SpaceX flew NASA astronauts, a JAXA astronaut, and a Russian cosmonaut to the International Space Station aboard Dragon.

Crew Dragon is the first privately built and operated orbital spacecraft capable of flying humans. As a reusable SpaceX capsule, it transports crew members to and from the International Space Station. It will also carry paying customers to the Station and low Earth orbit. While it typically accommodates a crew of four, this number can vary depending on the mission.

Crew Dragon

Soyuz MS-01

Soyuz MS-01 took three members of the Expedition 48 crew to the International Space Station.  This was first flight of the Soyuz MS variant.

Soyuz is a human-carrying capsule built and operated by Russia, capable of transporting up to three people to the Space Station at a time. It has been upgraded numerous times since its first use in the 1960s for the Soviet lunar program and was the only crewed vehicle for the Station from 2011 to 2020.

Soyuz

Takuya Onishi

Japan

Roscosmos

This astronaut is in the top 5% for total time in space.

Elite Spaceflyer

Soyuz MS-16

Soyuz MS-16 brought two Russians and an American to the International Space Station. Originally, a Japanese astronaut was supposed to fly but was replaced with an American due to continued delays to the start of the Commercial Crew Program for NASA. After 9 years as the only craft capable of launching people to (and bringing them back from) the ISS, this mission marked the Soyuz's last flight in that role. Six weeks after this flight began, SpaceX launched its first crewed mission to the ISS, once again giving the outpost two vehicles capable of launching and landing humans.

Soyuz TMA-22

Soyuz TMA-22 ferried three members of the Expedition 29 crew to the International Space Station. This was the final flight of the Soyuz TMA variant and the first launch in a nearly nine-year period when Russia was the only nation capable of taking crew to the ISS.

Anatoli Ivanishin

Russia

NASA

Soyuz MS-17

United States of America

Soyuz MS-17 ferried three international crew members to the Space Station, two Russians and one American. This was the first of two flights to expand the Station's permanent crew size to seven people.

Kathleen Rubins

SpaceX

Soyuz MS-11

This was a critical International Space Station crew launch ferrying three people to the outpost. When the Soyuz MS-10 in-flight failure occurred two months earlier, it left the ISS in a precarious position: the three crew on the outpost had to come home by late-December or they would exceed the on-orbit time limit for their Soyuz MS-09 craft. That meant this mission's planned late-December launch had to be advanced to early-December, and teams back on the ground had to quickly discover and fix the cause of the Soyuz MS-10 failure or they'd risk having to de-crew the entire ISS. A fix was identified, implemented, and tested within six weeks, allowing this mission to fly early.

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