Satoshi Furukawa

NASDA/JAXA career

Furukawa was selected by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) in February 1999 as one of three Japanese astronaut candidates for the International Space Station. He started the ISS Astronaut Basic Training program in April 1999 and was certified as an astronaut in January 2001. Since April 2001, he participated in ISS Advanced Training and supported the development of hardware and operation of the Japanese ISS Experimental Module Kibō.

On October 1, 2003, NASDA merged with ISAS and NAL and was renamed JAXA. In May 2004, he completed Soyuz-TMA Flight Engineer-1 training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC) in Star City, Russia. Furukawa arrived at the Johnson Space Center in June 2004. In February 2006, he completed NASA Astronaut Candidate Training, which included scientific and technical briefings, intensive instruction in Shuttle and ISS systems, physiological training, T-38 Talon flight training, and water and wilderness survival training.

This qualified him for technical assignments within the NASA Astronaut Office and for flight assignment as a mission specialist on Space Shuttle missions. In August 2007, he served as an aquanaut during the NEEMO 13 project, an exploration research mission held in Aquarius, the world's only undersea research laboratory. In 2013, Furukawa served as a cavenaut in the ESA CAVES training in Sardinia, alongside Jeremy Hansen, Michael Barratt, Jack Fisher, Aleksei Ovchinin, and Paolo Nespoli.

Spaceflight experience

Furukawa was assigned as a flight engineer to the International Space Station Expedition 28/29 long duration missions. The Soyuz TMA-02M spacecraft carrying Furukawa, cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, and NASA astronaut Michael Fossum lifted off from the Baikonour Cosmodrome on June 7, 2011. Carrying the same crew, Soyuz TMA-02M undocked from the ISS at 11:00 pm UTC on November 21, 2011. The spacecraft soft-landed safely—albeit on its side—in Kazakhstan at 2:26 am UTC on November 22. In 2023-2024, he completed a second long-duration flight to the ISS as a mission specialist on Expedition 69/70, lifting off on the Crew-7 mission of a SpaceX Crew Dragon on August 26, 2023 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and returning to Earth on March 12, 2024.

Controversies

In 2016 and 2017, Furukawa was overseeing a two-week-long spaceflight analog mission in Tsukuba, a city northeast of Tokyo. 40 participants were confined to closed environments to simulate what astronauts experience during spaceflight, and their stress levels and mental well-being were to be assessed by two researchers. The researchers fabricated research data, compiling psychological assessments without actually conducting interviews and rewriting participant diagnoses.

They also claimed that three researchers had conducted the interviews when there were only two. In November 2020, JAXA began investigating the research results and subsequently suspended the 190 million yen ($1.4 million) experiment. Furukawa was officially reprimanded by JAXA due to his role as project supervisor. However, since he was not personally involved in fabricating the data, Furukawa was allowed to remain on the current ISS mission in 2023.