JAXA and European Partners and Space Industry
AUTHOR
Dr. YAMAKAWA Hiroshi
President
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was established to enhance Japan’s aerospace capabilities and to promote space development and utilization. In the Basic Plan on Space Policy enacted by Government of Japan, JAXA is positioned as the core implementing agency to support the Japanese government’s development and utilization of space with technology, and it carries out everything from basic research to development and utilization in the field of aerospace.
To revitalize Japan’s aerospace sector, JAXA’s mid- to long-term plan has identified the following six issues as high priority policy objectives to be addressed. They are:
Ensuring space security
Creation of new knowledge through space scienceand exploration
Contributing to disaster management, national resilience, and solving global issues
Realizing economic growth and innovation for which space is the driving force
Strengthening the comprehensive infrastructure that supports Japan’s space activities including industrial, scientific, and technological foundations
Promoting the aviation industry and strengthening its international competitiveness.
AXA’s activities cover broad areas of aerospace, such as space transportation, earth observation, human spaceflight, space science and exploration, and aeronautical research. And among its various projects, Asteroid Explorer “Hayabusa2” and its successful sample return from asteroid “Ryugu” is worth mentioning here, as JAXA’s highlight in 2020.
“Hayabusa2” was launched by the H-IIA Launch Vehicle No. 26 from the Tanegashima Space Center in 2014, and its re-entry capsule returned to Australia in December last year after a six-year round-trip journey of about 5 billion kilometers to the asteroid “Ryugu”. Following the return of the re- entry capsule to Japan, we have confirmed that samples from the asteroid have been collected successfully in the sample container. Sample curation is now underway, and we are hopeful that the analysis of these samples will contribute to research on the formation process of planets and the origin of life.
Such historic achievement would not have been possible without the cooperation with our international partners. While it is true that the space sector has become a competitive area with increasing number of market entrants, international cooperation is essential to tackle global issues such as climate change and to realize ambitious undertakings such as the International Space Station (ISS) and space exploration that are beyond the reach of any one country.
As of today, JAXA enjoys cooperative relationships with about 70 countries and regions through interagency agreements with national space agencies and through the ISS program. In particular, we have built long-standing and fruitful relationships with European partners such as ASI, CNES, DLR, ESA, and so on. The above “Hayabusa2” project is a compelling example of this, where CNES and DLR have jointly developed the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) in collaboration with JAXA to explore the surface of asteroid “Ryugu”. In October 2018, MASCOT successfully landed and carried out experiments on the asteroid’s surface, providing data on materials and the surrounding area to find a location to gather soil samples, which significantly increased the scientific value of “Hayabusa2” project.
As a number of new actors have interest in aerospace activities today, engagement with space industry and its promotion have become one of our main priorities.
The Japanese government issued the “Space Industry Vision 2030” in 2017. Under this vision, the space industry is regarded as a driving force to advance the fourth industrial revolution, and space is positioned as a frontier to create growth industries in addition to improving the productivity of other industries. A notable aspect of this vision is its goal of doubling the overall market size of the Japanese space industry up to 2.4 trillion yen by the early 2030s by expanding the role of the private sector.
JAXA have been supporting the achievement of this goal through various initiatives, and two of those are the J-SPARC program, which aims to create space business concepts in collaboration with private companies, and the Space Exploration Innovation Hub Center, where JAXA collaborates with companies, universities and research institutes on research and development that will contribute to both future space exploration and ground-based businesses.
The first one, J-SPARC, was launched in 2018 and is creating projects in collaboration with private companies interested in space businesses. The main feature of this program is that both JAXA and the partner private companies provide financial and human resources to jointly develop and demonstrate technologies. The goal of this project is to create new businesses led by the partner companies, and to bring positive feedback to JAXA’s future missions. Currently, 18 projects are underway under this initiative, ranging from concepts that create businesses that are close to our daily lives, such as education and entertainment, to those that aim to demonstrate technologies and launch businesses in space, such as space transportation and space debris removal.
Our second initiative, the Space Exploration Innovation Hub Center, was established in JAXA in 2015 to encourage universities, research institutions, and companies from different sectors to enter into the space industry and to promote research related to JAXA’s space exploration in collaboration with these organizations.
Through the activities of the Hub Center, JAXA has been collaborating with companies, universities, and research institutes on research and development of technologies that will contribute to future space exploration, such as exploration technology in a wide range of unexplored areas, automatic and autonomous exploration technology, In- situ resource utilization (ISRU) technology, as well as common technology, and more than 120 joint research projects have been adopted so far. These research results contribute not only to space exploration but also to businesses and research on the ground.
Through the activities of the Hub Center, a virtuous cycle has been created in which terrestrial technologies developed by companies, universities, and research institutions from different sectors are utilized for space exploration, and the results obtained through joint research with JAXA, in turn, contribute to businesses on the ground.
Through these initiatives, JAXA is expanding the aerospace ecosystem and contributing to the growth of Japan’s space industry.
Aerospace technology has become a cross-cutting tool for our society and economy today. To realize a safe and prosperous society, JAXA will continue to collaborate with international and industrial partners to develop leading- edge technologies and return the fruits of our collaboration to our human society.
Published 2021