Satoshi Takamatsu (高松 聡, Takamatsu Satoshi; born March 5, 1963) is a Japanese artist, creative director, photographer, and private astronaut candidate. He is the founder of WE, an art project centered on a planned long-duration mission to the International Space Station (ISS) to capture ultra-high-resolution imagery of Earth for immersive public exhibition. Takamatsu has described the project as an attempt to reproduce aspects of the Overview Effect for people on the ground, with the aim of encouraging greater awareness of peace, the environment, and, in his own writings, the human values that should guide the development of advanced artificial intelligence. Before founding WE, Takamatsu had a three-decade career in advertising. He is known for leading the creation of the world's first television commercial filmed aboard the International Space Station (2001), organizing the first FIFA-endorsed public viewing event during the 2002 FIFA World Cup, and serving in leading creative roles on the Nissin Cup Noodle "Freedom" and "NO BORDER" campaigns. He completed eight months of cosmonaut training at Star City, Russia, in 2015, and Axiom Space announced in 2024 that it had signed an agreement reserving him a seat on a future long-duration human spaceflight mission to the ISS.
Source: “Satoshi Takamatsu”, English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), excerpt