Naoko Yamazaki

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Naoko Yamazaki
Naoko Yamazaki
Country: Japan
Organization: JAXA
selected on February 1999
Calls: 1 space flight
Begin: April 5, 2010
Landing: April 20, 2010
Time in space: 15d 02h 47min
retired on August 31, 2011
Space flights

Naoko Yamazaki ( Japanese 山崎 直 子 , Yamazaki Naoko ; born December 27, 1970 in Matsudo , Japan ) is a former Japanese astronaut . She was born as Naoko Sumino ( 角 野 直 子 , Sumino Naoko ).

education

From 1975 to 1979 she lived in Sapporo with her parents . From 1986 onwards she wanted to be an astronaut, because at that time the Challenger had been destroyed in an accident and she had heard about the story of the American astronaut Christa McAuliffe .

Yamazaki studied at the University of Tokyo aerospace engineering , graduated in 1993 with a Bachelor and 1996 with a master her studies there.

JAXA

In 1999 she was selected with two other candidates to visit the ISS as a Japanese astronaut. She is the second Japanese woman to be selected after Chiaki Mukai . She was trained as a specialist in centrifuge technology. From May 2004 she received training for the Space Shuttle and the ISS at the Johnson Space Center so that she can be used as a mission specialist.

On December 5, 2008, Yamazaki was named as Mission Specialist for the STS-131 mission to the ISS space station . The space shuttle Discovery was launched on April 5, 2010 and landed on April 20, 2010. Naoko Yamazaki was the second woman in Japan to undertake a trip into space. On board, it was her job to operate the space shuttle's robotic arm.

After the space flight

As of December 2010, Yamazaki was on leave from JAXA and worked as a part-time researcher at the University of Tokyo . On August 31, 2011 she left JAXA completely.

Private

Yamazaki has been married since 1999 and has one daughter. Her hobbies are Japanese calligraphy , diving , jazz dance , flying , skiing and tennis .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ NASA Assigns Astronaut Crews for Future Space Shuttle Missions. NASA, December 5, 2008, accessed December 7, 2008 .
  2. ^ STS-131 Mission Information. NASA, April 20, 2010, accessed April 20, 2010 .
  3. ↑ NZZ Online: Japanese woman is sent into space. November 12, 2008. Retrieved November 14, 2008 .
  4. ↑ Astronaut mom Yamazaki retiring ( Memento from September 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Astronaut Yamazaki edu career. (No longer available online.) August 31, 2011, archived from the original on August 20, 2014 ; accessed on August 19, 2014 .

Web links

Commons : Naoko Yamazaki  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Yamazaki, Naoko
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 山崎 直 子 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH December 27, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Matsudo , Japan