Soichi Noguchi

Soichi Noguchi was born on 15 April 1965 in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, and trained as an aeronautical engineer, earning bachelor's and master's degrees in the field from the University of Tokyo. Before spaceflight he worked at Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries on jet-engine development, grounding his later career in hands-on propulsion and aerospace systems. In 1996 he was selected by Japan's National Space Development Agency (NASDA), joining the corps that would evolve into JAXA and beginning a path that would ultimately see him fly aboard three fundamentally different spacecraft across three decades of a changing spaceflight landscape.

Noguchi's first mission carried unusual weight: he flew as a mission specialist on STS-114 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery, launched on 26 July 2005 as NASA's first "Return to Flight" mission following the loss of Columbia. As lead spacewalker he conducted three EVAs, including pioneering repair-technique demonstrations on the orbiter's thermal protection system, and became the first Japanese astronaut to perform spacewalks at the ISS. In December 2009 he launched on Soyuz TMA-17 for a long-duration stay across Expeditions 22 and 23, returning to Earth in June 2010. His third flight made history for the commercial era: aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience, he launched on 15 November 2020 on Crew-1, the first operational flight of a commercial crew vehicle, and the first Crew Dragon to carry a Japanese astronaut. During that mission he performed a spacewalk that set a Guinness World Record for the longest interval between spacewalks — more than fifteen years since his STS-114 EVAs. Across his three flights he logged roughly 7,632 hours in space and four spacewalks.

Noguchi's defining distinction is his certified Guinness World Record as the first person to return from space by three different methods: a Space Shuttle runway landing, a Soyuz ground touchdown, and a Crew Dragon ocean splashdown — a span that mirrors the entire arc of modern human spaceflight from the Shuttle age into the commercial era. Honored with the NASA Space Flight Medal and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, he retired from JAXA on 1 June 2022. In retirement he has remained an influential voice for international cooperation and public engagement, an active participant in the Association of Space Explorers and a passionate photographer who has sought to share the "overview effect" — the perspective of a borderless Earth — with audiences on the ground.