https://japantoday.com-TOKYO
Japan’s space agency said Tuesday that it has selected a World Bank employee and a surgeon as astronaut candidates in its first recruitment in more than 13 years.
Makoto Suwa, 46, a disaster prevention specialist at the World Bank and Ayu Yoneda, 28, a surgeon at the Japanese Red Cross Medical Center, will join the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency for two years of training.
Yoneda, the youngest ever candidate, will become the third female astronaut in JAXA, after Chiaki Mukai and Naoko Yamazaki, while Suwa is the oldest candidate selected.
“I felt a great sense of responsibility” when notified, Suwa said at a press conference in Tokyo that he joined online from Washington.
“I was happy, surprised and felt determined by a sense of responsibility and duty,” Yoneda said. “I’m interested in seeing how the Earth looks from the moon during an eclipse.”
Suwa previously worked on a Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers program in Rwanda and for the World Meteorological Organization. Yoneda graduated from the University of Tokyo’s graduate school of medicine in 2019.
Once officially certified as astronauts, the two could participate in missions on the International Space Station as well as take part in the Artemis Project, an international effort led by the United States to return humans to the moon for the first time since the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s 1972 Apollo 17 mission.
The Japanese government said in 2019 that it was joining the project, seeking to become the second country after the United States to land an astronaut on the Moon.
Suwa and Yoneda are the first to be selected as potential astronauts since Norishige Kanai in September 2009.
JAXA’s exams for astronauts began in April last year, with applicants not required to have experience in related fields. A total 4,127 people applied, with eight men and two women making it to the final round of exams in January through February this year.