April 12 was selected by the UN in 2011 as the International Day of Human Space Flight, on the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic flight into space. While Japan has not launched a crewed spacecraft, many Japanese astronauts have served on the International Space Station, and Japan has a very successful program of launching satellites and deep-space probes. These launches take off from the small island of Tanegashima, just to the south of Kyushu, and are commanded from the JAXA Tsukuba Space Center, just a short way outside Tokyo.