A COMMERCIAL television station in Tokyo is aiming to beat Japan鈥檚 national
space agency by six months in putting the country鈥檚 first citizen into space.
Two employees of Tokyo Broadcasting System, a 25-year-old camera operator
and a 47-year-old former foreign editor, last week took a break from cosmonaut
training in the Soviet Union to announce that one of them will fly to the
Mir space station in December.
If all goes well, the successful candidate will become the first journalist
from any country, as well as the first person from Japan, to fly in space.
The country鈥檚 first 鈥榦fficial鈥� astronaut is due to fly into space on the
US鈥檚 space shuttle, to tend a package of experiments in biology and materials
processing, in June 1991.
