MOSCOW (Kyodo) Astronaut Soichi Noguchi, gearing up for a record-breaking space mission, said Friday he is honored to have been selected for a crucial role in Russia's space program.
A Soyuz space capsule set to be launched in December will ferry Noguchi to the International Space Station, where he would stay for six months, breaking the Japanese space duration record set by Koichi Wakata, who spent 4 1/2 months on the ISS earlier this year.
Noguchi allowed the media to get a glimpse of his training regimen at Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center in suburban Moscow on Friday.
Noguchi will act as an assistant to the captain of the Soyuz capsule, which would make him the first Japanese astronaut to sit at the controls of a spacecraft.
"They've assigned such an important role to me, a foreigner, and I'm honored," said the 44-year-old, who used a simulator to practice operations he will execute when the capsule re-enters the atmosphere upon its return to Earth next May.
Reporters were also shown a training session on spacecraft docking in which a Russian instructor gave Noguchi full marks.
"They evaluate us very strictly when it comes to how to control (a spacecraft) and it seems to be fairly different from the training I've received in the past," Noguchi said.
The upcoming mission will also make Noguchi the first Japanese astronaut to fly aboard both a U.S. space shuttle and a Soyuz spacecraft. Noguchi was a member of the crew of the space shuttle Discovery in 2005.
Toyohiro Akiyama, in his 1990 mission, became the only Japanese astronaut to go into space and return by Soyuz capsule.
Noguchi will start and end his upcoming space flight at the Baikonur Cosmodrome space launch facility in Kazakhstan.