Launch in Star Festival

The Japanese celebrated the annual meeting of two lovers Orihime and Hikoboshi, represented by stars Vega and Altair, beyond Milky Way over the evening sky on Thursday. Possibly adding a new page on the history of Star Festival, Takuya Onishi boarded on a spacecraft Soyuz and launched to the sky from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Russia. He will visit International Space Station for four months to examine how human being can find the way to survive in the outer space.

Onishi is the eleventh Japanese astronaut. TV footage showed Onishi waving hand and saying “I’m doing the best” before onboard. Following former five astronauts who stayed ISS for a long period, Onishi will deal with the operations such as aging test on mouse in Japanese space laboratory, Kibou, the only facility for human being to stay in the space for long period of time, or acceptance of unmanned supplier vehicle, Kounotori.

When he was in the second grade of an elementary, Onishi realized that he was interested in the space with experience of watching Star Wars. An American movie “Apollo 13” in 1995 determined his fortune to be an astronaut. After he became a pilot of All Nippon Airways, Onishi kept on obtaining technique for cruising and cultivated his ability to communicate to staffs, which is required for space travel.

For Onishi, ISS is the best place to go forward to the Moon or the Mars. “I want to improve myself by making successful achievement in ISS,” told Onishi. But the mission is not only for Onishi himself, but future of Japanese science. While it has the technology to launch satellites, Japanese science cannot send astronauts to the space without helps of foreign technology. Cooperative system of ISS has been a helpful infrastructure for Japan.

Achievements in ISS were used for actual technology for our ordinary life on the Earth. Development for manned space exploration led to new technology on capsule endoscope or device for cell culture for medical purposes. However, there is not clear vision after ISS, which will be retired in 2020s. In the volatile situation of international relationship, it is not easy for Japan to find a way to maintain good relationship with the others.

International competition over space technology is getting harder. While United States has a plan for exploration of the Mars with manned spacecraft in 2030, China or Russia is forwarding to have its own space station in 2022 or 2024. India is also willing to join the development of its own manned spacecraft. An American private firm SpaceX announced a plan to launch manned spacecraft to the Mars as soon as 2024. It is actually unclear how Japan can be joining the race over space technology.