Soichi Noguchi

Soichi Noguchi (野口 聡一, Noguchi Sōichi; born 15 April 1965) is a Japanese aeronautical engineer and former JAXA astronaut. His first spaceflight was as a mission specialist aboard STS-114 on 26 July 2005 for NASA's first "return to flight" Space Shuttle mission after the Columbia disaster. He was also in space as part of the Soyuz TMA-17 crew and Expedition 22 to the International Space Station (ISS), returning to Earth on 2 June 2010. He is the sixth Japanese astronaut to fly in space, the fifth to fly on the Space Shuttle, and the first to fly on Crew Dragon. His third flight was on board the Dragon 2 capsule for the SpaceX Crew-1 mission which launched successfully on 15 November 2020 and landed on 2 May 2021. This makes him the third astronaut to fly on three different launch systems. He became a part-time lecturer at the graduate school of the University of Tokyo since 2011, a project professor since 2021. As of 2022, he is a project professor at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Nihon University. He retired from astronaut duty and quit JAXA on 1 June 2022. He assumed the honorary director of CupNoodles Museum since 7 June 2022, the chief executive fellow of the Institute for International Socio-Economic Studies and the advisor of IHI Corporation since 1 July 2022. He is the representative of MiraiSpace Co., Ltd. (合同会社未来圏).