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Chiaki Mukai
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Japanese physician and JAXA astronaut (born 1952)
OverviewAI-generated
Chiaki Mukai (むかい ちあき) is a Japanese astronaut, physician, and surgeon born in 1952 in Tatebayashi. She is a citizen of Japan and speaks Japanese. Mukai was educated at Keio University and has been employed by the Tokyo University of Science. Her name in her native language is 向井千秋.
She served as a member of the crew for the STS-95 and STS-65 missions. Mukai has spent 34059 units of time in space. She has been recognized in the Astronauts collection.
Mukai has received the Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation and the Knight of the Legion of Honour.
Synthesized by Vinony from 15 facts across 2 sources: Wikidata, Vinony collections. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Key facts
- Born
- ( 1952-05-06 ) May 6, 1952 (age 74) , Tatebayashi , Gunma Prefecture , Japan
- Occupation
- Physician
- Status
- Retired
- Time in space
- 23d 15h 39m
- Selection
- 1985 NASDA Group
- Missions
- STS-65 , STS-95
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Gender
- female
- Citizenship
- Japan
- Place of birth
- Tatebayashi
- Occupation
- surgeon
- Educated at
- Keio University
- Employer
- Tokyo University of Science
- Languages spoken
- Japanese
- Image
- Chiaki Mukai.jpg
Show 7 more facts
via Wikidata · CC0
~8 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Chiaki Mukai (向井 千秋, Mukai Chiaki; born May 6, 1952) 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 Space Shuttle Columbia in July 1994, which was a Spacelab mission. Her second spaceflight was STS-95 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998. In total she has spent 23 days in space.
Mukai was selected to be an astronaut by Japanese national space agency NASDA (now called JAXA) in 1985. Prior to this, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery at Keio University, the oldest university in Japan. In 2015, she became Vice President of the Tokyo University of Science. In addition, she became JAXA Technical Counselor.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Chiaki Mukai” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.