Japanese astronauts will travel to NASA’s Artemis missions to the moon and even reach the surface, amid an inter-agency push to expand lunar exploration.
President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida confirmed this commitment on Monday (May 23rd) during a meeting in Tokyo, NASA and the White House said in separate announcements.
A Japanese astronaut will visit NASA’s planned orbiting space station Gateway, and the two leaders also said they have a “shared ambition” to put a Japanese astronaut on the moon, NASA officials said. opens in a new tab).
Related: NASA’s mission to the moon Artemis 1 is explained in the photos
“I am excited about the work we will do together at Gateway Station around the Moon, and I hope that the first Japanese astronaut will join us on the lunar surface mission under the Artemis program,” Biden said in the announcement. of the agency.
Japan’s space work is part of a broader set of agreements between the country and the United States on issues ranging from 5G cellular networks to cybersecurity and science and technology collaborations. indicate an explanatory document of the White House (opens in a new tab).
If confirmed, the space deal would allow Japan to further expand its scope and scope of exploration after outstanding missions in recent years. It would also align with Kishida’s inaugural promises since October to put a Japanese astronaut on the lunar surface, including a review of Japan’s space policy (opens in a new tab) to include a push for a manned landing on the moon.
Japan is already a major space player. In December 2020, for example, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) brought a sample of an asteroid to Earth. JAXA has long been a partner of the International Space Station (ISS), perhaps best known for its Kibo science module and robotic arm technology. And later this year, veteran astronaut Koichi Wakata will become the first Japanese person to join a SpaceX Dragon mission on the ISS.
JAXA is looking to upgrade its astronaut corps. The agency opened its first recruitment in 13 years in 2021 and attracted a record 4,127 applicants (opens in a new tab) for the opportunity, the Japan Times reported.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is working in a rapidly changing international space environment. The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 is still ongoing and has broken numerous space partnerships; Although the ISS interagency agreement persists with Russia, there are no guarantees that the orbital complex will extend its mission beyond 2024, although Biden has authorized the United States to continue operating for another six years. .
The United States is rapidly expanding its space work in Asia. On May 21, Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol held a summit in Seoul, during which Biden agreed to expand their collaborations “to all areas of space cooperation.” SpaceNews (opens a new tab).
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata tied to his sleeping bag on the International Space Station. (Image credit: NASA)
Japan is a signatory to the Artemis agreements aimed at governing civilian space activities among allies; several other nations have signed the agreement in recent weeks, bringing the total number of participants to 19. The United States and Japan plan to deepen their agreement through an implementation agreement later in 2022.
The White House wrote (opens in a new tab) that the next agreement “will expand bilateral cooperation for decades to find a wide variety of space exploration, scientific and research activities.”
This collaboration is symbolized by the fact that the two nations are exchanging asteroid samples from two recent missions, the White House said. Japan has already delivered a sample of Ryugu returned to Earth in December 2020 for its Hayabusa2 mission, and NASA will do the same with pieces of the asteroid Bennu in 2023 through the return of Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification , Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spaceship.
No further details are available on how Japan and the United States will carry out the implementation agreement, but a similar agreement with the United Arab Emirates in 2018 set out some regulations for cooperation, training procedures and ground research projects. It also allowed UAE astronauts to board the ISS, starting with Hazza Al Mansoori in 2019.
Earth observation may also be part of the next agreement, as this activity was highlighted in the White House tab. “The United States and Japan are cooperating to use Earth observation data to improve our ability to predict how our climate is changing,” the White House said.
This is likely to be an allusion to a May 19 announcement from NASA (opens in a new tab) of a new “control panel” that allows public access to climate information. The dashboard includes information from the Japanese and European Space Agency based on individual and shared missions of the three space agencies.
NASA’s ultimate goal for human exploration in the 2020s is to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon for the first time since 1972. It also plans to expand Apollo’s short-term explorations with a permanent presence of landing near the lunar south pole, where water ice appears. be abundant within permanently shaded craters. The Gateway lunar station will support these missions orbiting the Moon.
Another country, in addition to the United States, already has a seat on an Artemis mission. Canada, one of Artemis’ first signatories, promised in 2019 a robotic arm known as Canadarm3 to support Gateway operations. In return, Canadians received several astronaut seats in future missions, including the Artemis 2 mission to orbit the Moon no earlier than 2024. Landings should begin in 2025 with Artemis 3, if schedules are met. current.
That said, this timeline depends in large part on Artemis 1, an unmanned test mission around the moon that NASA plans to launch this summer. The mission cannot take off until NASA completes a “wet general test” of the Space Launch System megacoet that will launch it. The wet suit originally started on April 1, but was delayed and then stopped due to various technical issues. NASA plans to resume testing next month.
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