First journalist aboard Mir station: How Toyohiro Akiyama lifted off from the USSR

Thirty years ago today, on 2 December 1990, the Soyuz TM-11 spacecraft lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome with an unusual passenger on board: Toyohiro Akiyama, a citizen of Japan. He became the first Japanese national, the first journalist and the first civilian to travel into space. Eleven years later, US citizen Dennis Tito became known as the first space tourist, but Toyohiro Akiyama was the first ordinary person to buy a ticket for a space flight.

So how did a journalist make it into space and what happened to him there – find out here, in this joint mos.ru and Mosgortour story.

Civilians blast off

The United States made the first attempt to send a civilian into space. In 1984, the Ronald Reagan administration announced the Teacher in Space competition. Sharon Christa McAuliffe, 37, was chosen from among 11,000 candidates and was named the first Teacher in Space. Unfortunately, the experiment ended in a tragedy that shocked the world. On 28 January 1986, US Space Shuttle Challenger, with seven astronauts, including McAuliffe, onboard, exploded 72 seconds after liftoff, killing the entire crew.

Thousands of people watched the liftoff because the Challenger was carrying a teacher into orbit, with the media covering it in great detail. Optimistic news reports on pre-launch preparations gave way to alarming coverage from the disaster site. Toyohiro Akiyama, then head of the Washington bureau of the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), a television and radio broadcaster, was among the journalists who reported the Challenger disaster to the people of Japan. Did he think on that day that four years later he will figure in news reports on the first civilian in space? Probably not.

TBS space anniversary

In 1966, Toyohiro Akiyama joined the Tokyo Broadcasting System after graduating from university and worked as an editor, a commentator and a war correspondent in Vietnam. In 1984, he was placed in charge of the TBS Washington bureau. After returning home in 1988, the journalist  missed the excitement and joined his company’s unprecedented space project without a second thought.

In 1987, TBS representatives met with top managers of Glavkosmos and suggested launching a Japanese journalist aboard a Soyuz spacecraft.

It is believed that the television and radio corporation wanted to celebrate its 40^th anniversary that way. On 27 March 1989, Glavkosmos, Licenseintorg and TBS signed a commercial agreement to launch a Japanese journalist on an eight-day space mission.

In all, 162 Japanese journalists vied for the right to travel into space. Japanese doctors had such stringent health requirements that none of the potential astronauts passed the first medical board. After scaling down these requirements somewhat, the doctors selected 40 candidates.

Following two more tests in Japan and the Soviet Union, seven contenders remained by August 1989. In the end, TBS executives chose two candidates: Toyohiro Akiyama, 47, and Ryoko Kikuchi, 26. In October, both journalists left for the Cosmonaut Training Centre near Moscow. Akiyama was assigned to the main crew together with Mission Commander Viktor Afanasyev and Flight Engineer Musa Manarov.  The standby crew consisted of Ryoko Kikuchi, Anatoly Artsebarsky and Sergei Krikalyov.

After learning about the upcoming mission, Soviet journalists also moved to select potential cosmonauts during a contest involving over 1,000 representatives of various newspapers and magazines. On 1 October 1990, six Soviet journalists started training and completed the course on 7 February 1991, two months after Akiyama’s return. However, the Soviets lost their chance to orbit the first journalist in history, the upcoming launch would not have made media headlines, and those who failed to become cosmonaut-researchers went back to their daily work.

The mission

The Soyuz TM-11 spacecraft lifted off without a hitch on 2 December 1990 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and docked with the Mir orbital station on 4 December. Akiyama was not just a space tourist: his status was the 8^th expedition’s cosmonaut-researcher, so he had a lot of work to do, rather than just enjoy his time in space. For example, the journalist was in charge of observing Japanese tree frogs in zero gravity.

According to Soviet cosmonauts, Akiyama had trouble adapting to zero gravity, but he staunchly withstood all hardships and reported on all developments aboard the station live on the first days of the mission. Each day, TBS viewers learned about various experiments, how cosmonauts slept and what they ate. Akiyama also prepared and held several video lessons for school students.

In order to make his daily radio and television broadcasts, Akiyama needed 170 kg of equipment, which was installed in advance of the mission aboard the Progress cargo spacecraft.

The Japanese researcher returned to Earth aboard the Soyuz 10-TM spacecraft on 10 December 1990 with members of the 7^th main expedition, Mission Commander Gennady Manakov and Flight Engineer Gennady Strekalov. The descent module was fitted with a camera so that TBS audiences were able to watch the soft landing live. That was how the Japanese journalist’s adventure ended after seven days 21 hours and 54 minutes in space.

Other members of the 8^th expedition stayed aboard the Mir station until 26 May 1991. They installed a lot of new equipment and conducted numerous research projects. When returning home aboard the Soyuz TM-11, Viktor Afanasyev and Musa Manarov took with them the United Kingdom’s Helen Sharman, the second civilian astronaut in history, who lifted off on 18 May 1991.

The star farmer

After completing the space mission, Akiyama seriously changed his world outlook and ended his 30-year career in 1995. He settled down near Fukushima and became a farmer. His experience in space compelled him to make such a radical change in his life.

In an interview to his former colleagues, Akiyama said the mission made him think about the history of humanity and the actions that enabled people to survive for centuries. He realised that he had never thought seriously about cooking and farming, and that he knew nothing about growing rice, for example. “I felt that I cannot die without learning these basics,” he said.

The journalist, cosmonaut and budding philosopher Toyohiro Akiyama could be growing rice and mushrooms to this day. However, the earthquake and the subsequent accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant on 11 March 2011 changed his plans. His farm was contaminated with radiation and Akiyama moved to Kyoto, where he started lecturing on agriculture at the Kyoto University of Art and Design.

Akiyama, now 78, retired in 2018. In 2011, the President of Russia awarded him the Medal for Merit in Space Exploration. This is not his only award; in 1990, Akiyama received the Order of Friendship of Peoples.