Aug 7 1985
From The Space Library
Japan nominated three astronaut candidates, one a woman, to fly in January 1988 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, a UPI bulletin in NASA Current News said. The one selected to fly would become the first Japanese in space.
Those selected were Takao Doi, a researcher at a NASA center; Mamoru Mori, assistant professor of nucleonics at Hokkaido University; and Chiaki Naito, an assistant at Keio University's Medical School in Tokyo. Japan's National Space Development Agency selected them from among 533 applicants.
The Japanese astronaut would conduct a 12-minute experiment during Columbia's one-week mission. The other two candidates would serve as backups.
The three would take further medical and space simulation tests at Johnson Space Center and then undergo training before selection in May 1987 of the astronaut to fly on the mission. (UPI bulletin in NASA Current News, Aug 7/ 85)
The Smithsonian Institution announced selection of Robert R. Gilruth and astronauts Kathleen Sullivan and Bruce McCandless II to receive the newly created National Air and Space Museum Trophy for their achievements in the fields of aerospace science and technology. The Smithsonian on October 4 would present the trophy, created by Washington, D.C., sculptor John Safer, at the Air and Space Museum.
Sullivan, selected by NASA as an astronaut in 1978, was the first U.S. woman to walk in space in October 1984 on Space Shuttle flight 41-G. During that flight, Sullivan and fellow astronaut David Leestma tested an orbital refueling system for use on satellites and the proposed space station.
McCandless, a 1966 astronaut selection, flew for the first time February 1984 aboard Space Shuttle flight 41-B and became the first person to fly in space the manned maneuvering unit that he helped develop.
In 1936 Gilruth joined Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory where he specialized in structures, dynamic loads, and pilotless aircraft. In 1958 NASA named him director of its Space Task Group, the organization responsible for designing, developing, and testing the Mercury spacecraft. From 1961 to 1971, Gilruth was director of the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston where he was responsible for the Mercury, Gemini, and many Apollo missions. (Smithsonian Institution release, Aug 7/85)
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