Satoshi Takamatsu

Satoshi Takamatsu (高松聡, born March 5, 1963) is a Japanese advertisement entrepreneur, mainly in non-conventional advertising campaigns.

Business career

He received a Bachelor of Science in solid-state physics from the University of Tsukuba in 1983. He worked for Japanese advertising company Dentsu between 1983 and 2005. In 2005 he started his own advertising firm Ground, he is also founder and CEO of production company Space Films and space travel agency Space Travel, Japanese partner of Space Adventures.

Space tourist

In January 2015 he began training as an International Space Station spaceflight participant. Initially he was training to be the backup for the September 2015 Sarah Brightman Soyuz TMA-18M/Soyuz TMA-16M flight. On May 13, 2015, Sarah Brightman announced she had withdrawn from training, making Takamatsu part of the main crew. Takamatsu declined to take up the flight option on that flight, as he had planned to carry out art projects while in space, and the projects would not be ready by the September flight date. Instead, he would schedule a later flight, after the projects are ready for flight. Takamatsu was replaced on Soyuz TMA-18M by Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov, from the first Kazakhstan cosmonaut class, the first Kazakhstani cosmonaut selected to fly. Takamatsu's future flight is projected for the 2017-2020 period.