JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi inside Kibo’s airlock

iss064e040776 (March 10, 2021) — JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Soichi Noguchi is pictured inside the Kibo laboratory module’s airlock. Experiments and microsatellites, or CubeSats, are staged inside the airlock for deployment into the external environment of space. The airlock is then closed and depressurized before the Japanese robotic arm grapples the experiments and installs them on an external science platform outside Kibo. The CubeSats are ejected into Earth orbit from a small satellite deployer gripped at the end of the Japanese robotic arm.