The United States and Japan have agreed to work to place the first Japanese astronaut on the moon, accompanied by an American astronaut, while longtime allies develop a partnership to counter China.
The United States and Japan have agreed to work to place the first Japanese astronaut on the moon, accompanied by an American astronaut, while longtime allies develop a partnership to counter China.
The two countries said in a joint statement that they would collaborate on human and robotic lunar missions “including a shared ambition to see a future Japanese astronaut on the lunar surface,” with the goal of signing an implementation agreement this year.
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Following a meeting in Tokyo on Monday between President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the countries also said that apart from the expansion of Artemis’ collaboration. ”
The joint development of lunar exploration is linked to the Artemis project, a U.S.-led effort to return astronauts to the moon and eventually send humans to Mars.
U.S.-Japanese space cooperation “is taking off, looking at the moon and Mars,” Biden said at a news conference with Kishida on Monday.
“I am excited about the work we will do together at Gateway Station around the Moon and hope that the first Japanese astronaut will join us on the mission to the lunar surface, under the Artemis program,” he added.
The United States and Japan are looking to work more closely on space exploration after NASA officials warned of growing tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Monday’s news comes in the middle of a race to start extracting resources potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars to the Moon and elsewhere.
The moon may contain large amounts of helium-3, a potentially useful isotope as an alternative to uranium for nuclear power plants because it is not radioactive. Experts believe 5,000 tonnes of coal could be replaced by about three tablespoons of helium-3.
Space geopolitics reflects competition between the US and its allies against China and Russia. The world’s major superpowers have been fighting to agree on a set of common rules to govern the next generation of space activity.
Japan and South Korea are among the 19 countries that have agreed to support the Artemis Agreements, a set of non-legally binding principles for exploring the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
But China and Russia have led opposition to the agreements. They jointly promote an alternative project to the Moon that they say is open to other countries: the International Lunar Research Station.
Japan itself has one of the most advanced space programs in the world, and in 2020 the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency was able to recover material from an asteroid using the unmanned Hayabusa2 spacecraft.
About a dozen Japanese nationals have experienced space travel, placing the country roughly the same as China, Germany and France, but far behind the US and Russia in the world rankings. The country’s space budget rose more than 20 percent to 450 billion yen ($ 3.5 billion) last year.
The lack of cooperation between the United States and China in space exploration is especially dangerous at a time when the cosmos is piling up more and more and billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are launching more and more satellites to delve deeper into business opportunities.
Japanese e-commerce billionaire Yusaku Maezawa spent time at the International Space Station last year preparing to become the first private passenger on a planned trip around the Moon on SpaceX’s Musk in 2023. In fact, no Japanese citizen has landed on the moon.
In April, NASA conducted tests for the launch of Artemis I, a fully robotic mission to the moon, the first since Apollo 17 in 1972. China is advancing rapidly toward goal of adjusting U.S. capabilities. China is the only country to operate its own space station and last year became only the second nation after the United States to land a rover on Mars.
U.S. legislation first passed in 2011 barred NASA from most interactions with its Chinese counterpart, and the U.S. has blocked China’s involvement in the International Space Station, a move that simply goes push Beijing to build its own.