Takuya Onishi

Takuya Onishi was born in 1975 in Tokyo, Japan, and came to spaceflight from a career in commercial aviation. He studied aeronautics and astronautics at the University of Tokyo and joined All Nippon Airways, where he flew the Boeing 767 as a co-pilot and logged more than 3,700 flight hours as an airline pilot. In 2009 the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency selected him as an astronaut candidate, and after completing basic training he was certified for International Space Station duty, becoming one of the small cadre of Japanese astronauts qualified for long-duration missions.

Onishi has flown two missions to the ISS. His first launched on July 7, 2016 aboard Soyuz MS-01 — the maiden flight of the upgraded Soyuz MS spacecraft — carrying him to Expedition 48/49 as a flight engineer. During that roughly four-month stay he operated the station's robotics and became the first Japanese astronaut to capture an approaching Cygnus cargo spacecraft with the Canadarm2 robotic arm, before returning to Earth in October 2016. Nearly a decade later, Onishi returned to orbit as part of SpaceX Crew-10, launching aboard the Crew Dragon Endurance on March 14, 2025. On this flight he took command of the station during Expedition 73, becoming the third Japanese astronaut to serve as commander of the International Space Station, and he landed on August 9, 2025 after about 148 days in space.

Across his two flights Onishi has spent roughly 260 days in orbit and accumulated broad spaceflight experience. His command of Expedition 73 marked a significant milestone for Japan's human spaceflight program, underscoring the country's growing leadership role aboard the station following predecessors such as Koichi Wakata and Akihiko Hoshide. A former commercial pilot fluent in Japanese and English who also trained in Russian for Soyuz operations, Onishi has emphasized international crew cooperation and the use of the ISS as a platform for science, and he remains an active JAXA astronaut and a candidate for future missions as Japan participates in the Artemis lunar program and the Gateway station.