is a Japanese

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

and former

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...

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 orb ...

. She was the second Japanese woman to fly in space. The first was

Chiaki Mukai is a Japanese physician and JAXA astronaut. She was the first Japanese woman in space, the first Japanese citizen to have two spaceflights, and the first Asian woman in space. Both were Space Shuttle missions; her first was STS-65 aboard Spac ...

Early life

Yamazaki was born Naoko Sumino in Matsudo City. She spent two years of her childhood in

Sapporo ( ain, サッ・ポロ・ペッ, Satporopet, lit=Dry, Great River) is a city in Japan. It is the largest city north of Tokyo and the largest city on Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of the country. It ranks as the fifth most populous city ...

. After graduating from Ochanomizu University Senior High School in 1989, Yamazaki earned a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Aerospace Engineering from the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

in 1993 and a Master of Science degree with a major in Aerospace Engineering in 1996.

JAXA career

Yamazaki joined the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) in 1996 and was part of the development team for the system integration of the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM). She also worked on the JEM failure analysis and creating initial operation procedures. From June 1998 to March 2000, she was part of the ISS Centrifuge team (life science experiment facility) conducting conceptual framework and preliminary design. Yamazaki was selected as an astronaut candidate in February 1999 by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA, now JAXA), attended the

ISS The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (J ...

Astronaut Basic Training program beginning in April 1999, and was certified as an astronaut in September 2001. Since 2001, Yamazaki has participated in ISS Advanced Training and supported the development of the hardware and operation of the

Japanese Experiment Module Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

. In May 2004, Yamazaki completed

Soyuz Soyuz is a transliteration of the Cyrillic text Союз ( Russian and Ukrainian, 'Union'). It can refer to any union, such as a trade union (''profsoyuz'') or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Сою́з Сове́тских Социалис ...

-TMA Flight Engineer training at the

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

Star City, Russia Star City (russian: Звёздный городо́к, ''Zvyozdny gorodok''The name "Zvyozdny gorodok" literally means "starry townlet".) is a common name of an area in Zvyozdny gorodok, Moscow Oblast, Russia, which has since the 1960s been ...

NASA experience

STS-131_Soichi_Noguchi,_Stephanie_Wilson_and_Naoko_Yamazaki

In June 2004, Yamazaki arrived at the

Johnson Space Center The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was renamed in honor of the late U ...

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

, Texas to begin Astronaut Candidate Training school, where she was assigned to the Astronaut Office Robotics Branch. She was selected as a NASA mission specialist in 2006. In November 2008, JAXA announced that Yamazaki would become the second Japanese woman to fly in space on

STS-131 STS-131 ( ISS assembly flight 19A) was a NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS). launched on 5 April 2010 at 6:21 am from LC-39A, and landed at 9:08 am on 20 April 2010 on runway 33 at the Kennedy Space ...

, which launched on 5 April 2010. Since the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program na ...

retired the following year in 2011, she was also the last Japanese astronaut to fly the Space Shuttle. On April 5, 2010 Yamazaki entered space on the shuttle ''

Discovery Discovery may refer to: * Discovery (observation), observing or finding something unknown * Discovery (fiction), a character's learning something unknown * Discovery (law), a process in courts of law relating to evidence Discovery, The Discovery ...

'' as part of mission STS-131. She returned to Earth on April 20, 2010. STS-131 ISS-23 Four Women

Yamazaki retired from JAXA on August 31, 2011.

Post JAXA

After returning to Earth, after spending a total of 15.12 days in space, Yamazaki continued her studies and research University of Tokyo since December 2010. Since 2011, Yamazaki has been involved with promoting STEM activities as well as being a member of the Japanese government Space Policy Committee In July 2018, Yamazaki co-founded the Space Port Japan Association, which is an organization to support efforts to open

spaceports A spaceport or cosmodrome is a site for launching or receiving spacecraft, by analogy to a seaport for ships or an airport for aircraft. The word ''spaceport'', and even more so ''cosmodrome'', has traditionally been used for sites capable ...

in Japan through collaboration with companies, groups and government institutions. She is an adviser to the Young Astronaut Club, and Chairman of the Women in Aerospace program of the Japan Rocket Society. As of July 2019, Yamazaki was a PhD student at the Intelligent Space Systems Lab in the University of Tokyo.

Personal life

Yamazaki was married to Taichi Yamazaki and the couple have two children; they were divorced in February 2012. She enjoys scuba diving, snow skiing, flying and music. In 2007, Yamazaki provided the voice as herself in episode 7 of the anime ''

Rocket Girls is a Japanese light novel series by Hōsuke Nojiri. Set in the Solomon Islands, it follows the exploits of high-school girl Yukari Morita, who is pressed into service as an astronaut by a private Japanese space company called the Solomon Sp ...

''.

References

External links

JAXA biography
*

JAXA TODAY No. 2

Seeing Earth from Space
Naoko Yamazaki at TEDxHaneda, August 2015 {{DEFAULTSORT:Yamazaki, Naoko 1970 births Women astronauts Living people Japanese astronauts People from Chiba Prefecture University of Tokyo alumni Space Shuttle program astronauts