is a Japanese

surgeon In medicine, a surgeon is a medical doctor who performs surgery. Even though there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon is a licensed physician and received the same medical training as physicians before spec ...

and

JAXA The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into o ...

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

. Furukawa was assigned to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

as a flight engineer on long-duration missions Expedition 28/ 29 (2011) and Expedition 69/ 70 (2023-2024).

Medical career

Furakawa graduated from Eiko high school, Kamakura, in 1983; he received a

Doctor of Medicine A Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated MD, from the Latin language, Latin ) is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the ''MD'' denotes a professional degree of ph ...

degree from the

University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

in 1989, and a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

degree in Medical Science from the same in 2000. From 1989 to 1999, Furukawa worked in the Department of Surgery at the University of Tokyo, as well as the Department of Anesthesiology at JR Tokyo General Hospital, the Department of Surgery at Ibaraki Prefectural Central Hospital, and at Sakuragaoka Hospital.

NASDA/JAXA career

In February 1999, Furukawa was selected by the

National Space Development Agency of Japan The , or NASDA, was a Japanese national space agency established on October 1, 1969 under the National Space Development Agency Law only for peaceful purposes. Based on the Space Development Program enacted by the Minister of Education, Culture ...

(NASDA) as one of three Japanese astronaut candidates for the

(ISS). He started the ISS Astronaut Basic Training program in April 1999 and was certified as an astronaut in January 2001. Since April 2001, he has been participating in ISS Advanced Training, as well as supporting the development of the hardware and operation of the Japanese ISS Experimental Module '' Kibō''. On October 1, 2003, NASDA merged with ISAS (

Institute of Space and Astronautical Science , or ISAS, is a Japanese national research organization of astrophysics using rockets, astronomical satellites and interplanetary probes which played a major role in Japan's space development. Established as part of the University of Tokyo ...

) and NAL (

National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan The National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan (NAL), was established in July 1955. Originally known as the National Aeronautical Laboratory, it assumed its present name with the addition of the Aerospace Division in 1963. Since its establishment, it ...

) and was renamed JAXA (

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency The is the Japanese national Aeronautics, air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satell ...

). In May 2004, he completed

Soyuz-TMA The Soyuz-TMA () was a spacecraft built by Energia and used by Roscosmos for human spaceflight. It is a revision of the Soyuz spacecraft introduced in 2001 and was in use until 2012 after being superseded in 2010 by the Soyuz TMA-M. While it lo ...

Flight Engineer-1 training at the

Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center The Yuri A. Gagarin State Scientific Research-and-Testing Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC; Russian: Центр подготовки космонавтов имени Ю. А. Гагарина) is a Russian training facility responsible for tra ...

(GCTC), Star City, Russia. Furukawa after landing

Furukawa arrived at the

Johnson Space Center The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight in Houston, Texas (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight controller, flight control are conducted. ...

in June 2004. In February 2006 he completed NASA Astronaut Candidate Training that included scientific and technical briefings, intensive instruction in Shuttle and International Space Station systems, physiological training,

T-38 Talon The Northrop T-38 Talon is a two-seat, twinjet supersonic jet trainer designed and produced by the American aircraft manufacturer Northrop Corporation. It was the world's first supersonic trainer as well as the most produced. The T-38 can be tra ...

flight training, and water and wilderness survival training. Completion of this initial training qualified him for various technical assignments within the NASA Astronaut Office and for flight assignment as a mission specialist on Space Shuttle missions. In August 2007, Furukawa served as an

aquanaut An aquanaut is any person who remains underwater, breathing at the ambient pressure for long enough for the concentration of the inert components of the breathing gas dissolved in the body tissues to reach equilibrium, in a state known as sat ...

during the NEEMO 13 project, an exploration research mission held in Aquarius, the world's only undersea research laboratory. In 2013, Furukawa served as cavenaut into the ESA CAVES training in

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia an ...

, alongside Jeremy Hansen, Michael Barratt, Jack Fisher, Aleksei Ovchinin, and Paolo Nespoli.

Spaceflight experience

Furukawa was assigned as a flight engineer to the

Expedition 28/ 29 long duration missions. The

Soyuz TMA-02M Soyuz TMA-02M was a space mission that transported three members of the Expedition 28 crew to the International Space Station. TMA-02M was the 110th flight of a Soyuz spacecraft (first launched 1967) and the second flight of the improved Soyuz- ...

spacecraft carrying Furukawa, cosmonaut Sergey Volkov and NASA astronaut Michael Fossum lifted off from the Baikonour Cosmodrome on 7 June 2011. Carrying the same crew, Soyuz TMA-02M undocked from the ISS at 11:00 pm

UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...

on 21 November 2011. The spacecraft soft-landed safely—albeit on its side—in

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

at 2:26 am UTC on 22 November. 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 Dragon 2 is a class of partially reusable spacecraft developed, manufactured, and operated by the American space company SpaceX for flights to the International Space Station (ISS) and private spaceflight missions. The spacecraft, which cons ...

on 26 August 2023 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and returning to Earth on 12 March 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.
"Japanese Researchers Faked Data in Spaceflight Simulation"]. Gizmodo, 28 November 2022. Retrieved 2023-08-29.

Personal

Furukawa was born in

Yokohama is the List of cities in Japan, second-largest city in Japan by population as well as by area, and the country's most populous Municipalities of Japan, municipality. It is the capital and most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a popu ...

, Kanagawa, Japan. He enjoys baseball, bowling, music, and traveling. He is married and has two children.

References

External links

*
Spacefacts biography of Satoshi Furukawa
{{DEFAULTSORT:Furukawa, Satoshi 1964 births Living people Aquanauts Japanese astronauts People from Yokohama Crew members of the International Space Station Physician astronauts Space medicine doctors University of Tokyo alumni SpaceX astronauts