Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui will enter space for the first time on May 27 aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, education minister Hakubun Shimomura said Friday.
The rocket will lift off at 4:46 a.m. Japan time from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
"We want him to fulfill his duty by using his experience as a pilot and demonstrating the results of his training," the minister told a news conference.
Yui, 45, will serve as a flight engineer under commander Oleg Kononenko from the Russian Federal Space Agency. Also present will be fellow flight engineer Kjell Lindgren from NASA.
The three will stay aboard the International Space Station for about six months. Yui is due to use the time conducting experiments.
Yui studied engineering at the National Defense Academy and joined the Air Self-Defense Force in 1992. He was selected as an astronaut at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in 2009 and was certified as an ISS astronaut in July 2011.
JAXA will send astronaut Takuya Onishi to the ISS in 2016.