WHEN we were younger, on those days when we dreamed of who we wanted to be, we often gazed the sky and look at the moon at night and gleefully say, “When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut!”
Although most of us who dreamed to be an astronaut have chosen a different path, some of us still wonder what it feels like if those dreams become a reality.
Our inner self would still ask how does one get to be chosen for this great task of bringing the flag of humanity up in space and explore the many possibilities of how life can be sustained beyond the protective atmosphere of our own home, Earth.
On November 14, during the 23rd Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum in Manila, a first for the Philippines to host such event, the BusinessMirror interviewed Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (Jaxa) astronaut Soichi Noguchi.
Besides being an astronaut, Noguchi is a Japanese aeronautical engineer. According to Jaxa, his first spaceflight was aboard the Discovery space shuttle with mission STS-114, the “Return to Flight” space shuttle Mission on July 26, 2005. It was more than two years and five months after the space shuttle Columbia disaster, where the Columbia space shuttle disintegrated as it reentered to Earth from space and took the lives of seven crew members.
His next space mission was aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as a crew member of the ISS Expedition 22. He stayed for 161 days and reentered Earth on June 2, 2010.
Noguchi is the fifth Japanese to fly into space and fourth to fly on the space shuttle. He has a total of 177 days, three hours and five minutes in space logged for both his STS-114 mission and ISS Expedition 22 missions. He is currently the chief of Jaxa Astronaut Group and president of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE).
Noguchi believes in the power of the young generation. In a short lecture he gave in one of the workshops during the forum, he said, “Yesterday’s dream is today’s hope, and today’s hope is tomorrow’s reality, and the young generation is the driving force to make those dreams realized.”
Below are excerpts from an exclusive interview of the BusinessMirror with Noguchi:
When you were young, have you ever dreamed of being an astronaut?
I like to fly and I love watching all science-fiction movies, like Star Wars, Star Trek and all the Japanese animé. I dreamed that someday I want to fly into space, ride on a rocket and visit the space station. That was the beginning of my dream, a long-lasting dream.
When I graduated from the university with an engineering major, I started working in one of the heavy industries in Japan involved in space station. At that time, Jaxa started recruiting for a Japanese astronaut candidate. I was lucky enough to be selected. I was sent to Houston (Texas), and that’s where I had a good training together with the American nationals. Then, I was lucky enough to fly in 2001 (for the 2005 STS-114 mission).
How was the training for astronaut?
The training itself was very rigorous, very tough and very challenging. But it was also very rewarding, because what you’re trying to learn is to to fly to space, ride on a rocket, use robotic arms, do the spacewalk, some exploration and some new scientific experiment. Those things are definitely fun to learn and very rewarding to me. You would also have the feeling that you are a part of a big team. It’s definitely a very big team sport and I’m very proud to be a member of the space development team.
What was the hardest struggle you had while training?
The hardest thing in our training would be the robotics and also the spacewalk because, definitely, these were new things (for me). The training was underwater and it was long. It usually lasted for six hours underwater, and, again, involved a lot of people and lot of team efforts.
What was the best thing or experiment you did in space?
Well, the very important thing I did was to conduct the spacewalk. It was not an experiment but still it’s a very fun thing to do, like installing new equipment and enhancing the capability of the space station.
(According to Jaxa, during Noguchi’s STS-114 mission in space, where the Discovery space shuttle docked at the ISS, Noguchi conducted three extravehicular activities as a lead spacewalker, such as demonstrating in-flight repair techniques on shuttle’s Thermal Protection System tiles; replacing a failed Control Moment Gyro with a new one; and installing the External Stowage Platform-2 on the ISS. In total, he had 20 hours and five minutes of spacewalk time.)
How did you feel when you were leaving for space, and then from space back to Earth?
Leaving for space is actually very easy. You only ride a rocket and usually, it just takes eigth minutes. But coming back was longer. Also, you had to counteract the one-G, and that takes a long time for rehabilitation. (One-G or the g-force is acceleration due to gravity.)
Being an astronaut is a profession that requires all of the person’s physical, mental and emotional strength to work together. It takes a lot of training and hard work, but like most astronauts and even to those aspiring to be one, it may be the most rewarding experience of a lifetime. To journey into space is bringing humanity beyond the depths of our limitations and getting a whole view of the Earth at a different vantage point—from the ISS, it must be the most beautiful thing that their eyes would see.