Japan Is Changing the Game for Space Powers

[su27k]

https://thediplomat.com/2023/01/japan-is-changing-the-game-for-space-powers/

2023 is going to be Japan’s year in space. In a first for humanity, a privately owned lunar lander, built by Japanese private space company ispace, will attempt to land on the lunar surface by April. If successful, this private Japanese lunar landing will be a game changer for space that will challenge the usual way space exploration has been conducted since 1957, when the erstwhile Soviet Union launched Sputnik.

Space has remained a state-dominated enterprise since then. The private sector has provided the technological innovation for systems like rockets or satellites but never takes the lead when it comes to conducting space business in their own right. Now ispace will attempt to collect lunar samples and then sell them to NASA, as per a pre-agreed contract.

[Vahe231991]

https://thediplomat.com/2023/01/japan-is-changing-the-game-for-space-powers/

2023 is going to be Japan’s year in space. In a first for humanity, a privately owned lunar lander, built by Japanese private space company ispace, will attempt to land on the lunar surface by April. If successful, this private Japanese lunar landing will be a game changer for space that will challenge the usual way space exploration has been conducted since 1957, when the erstwhile Soviet Union launched Sputnik.

Space has remained a state-dominated enterprise since then. The private sector has provided the technological innovation for systems like rockets or satellites but never takes the lead when it comes to conducting space business in their own right. Now ispace will attempt to collect lunar samples and then sell them to NASA, as per a pre-agreed contract.

If the Hakuto-R makes a successful landing, Japan would not only become the newest country to land a privately funded lunar lander on the moon but also might consider developing a variant of the soon-to-be-launched H3 designed for launching astronauts into space. After all, adapting the H3 to carry a manned spacecraft similar to the Dragon 2 could trigger a manned space race between China and Japan, and eventually a future effort by Japan to use a Starship-like SLV to take people to the moon.

[MattMason]

It's important, as with NASA and commercial entities, to separate the commercial from the government-operated prospects.

To me, the only peoples more on fire about spaceflight than Japan are the United Arab Emirates, and with similar accomplishments. JAXA have gone well, if not first, in two asteroid sample missions, recovering the Akatsuki Venus orbiter back to Venus (where it's still working since 2010) through incredible use of solar orbital mechanics after it missed its initial capture burn, and as a central partner in the ISS in both crew and cargo resupply.

While the MHI's H-3 is delayed but now proceeding well, JAXA's next-generation HTV-X will continue resupply for the ISS but, possibly, the lunar Gateway, and perhaps even support crew. Their government isn't in the way of commercial ventures such as Hakuto-R, which also has UAE's first spacecraft, a small rover. UAE is doing something that NASA has yet to do--a robotic lunar rover, which only China and the USSR have done. (Apollo's LRV were non-robotic cars with no science instruments and no autonomy beyond control of its TV camera from the ground.) UAE sent Hope, a Mars orbiter, arriving in 2020. It became the second country to reach Mars to begin an operational mission on its first try (counting launch and carrier spacecraft failures).

JAXA also flew (with the Akatsuki Venus orbiter) IKAROS, the first interplanetary solar sail spacecraft.

Not all recent JAXA work has been successful, but still awesome. Carried aboard Artemis I were two JAXA-sponsored cubesats. OMOTENASHI and EQUULEUS. EQUULEUS did fine and may still be fine doing its magnetosphere studies. But eyes were on OMOTENASHI, which was trying to go all Ranger 3/Luna 9 with an airbag-based lithobraking lunar landing. Sadly, that spacecraft (like others sitting too long in the ICPS after multiple launch delays) deployed DOA.

Of course, commercial US ventures such as Astrobotic are up as well for the Moon, with their Peregrine lander poised to fly atop the first Vulcan Centaur as early as April.

Looking ahead, JAXA's Multiple Moons Mission (MMX) is an outright space-first if it goes well (Russia tried this with Phobos-Grunt and Phobos 1 and 2). MMX will send a lander to the Martian moon Phobos, get a sample and return home. No one's touched down on Phobos, much less return, and this will be a great achievement for a space agency that's already shown mastery of asteroid sampling.

Looking more forward, JAXA has two observatories in work, and a curiously and humorously named gamma-ray study spacecraft called HiZ-GUNDAM. No word on if this one might also transform and protect us from alien invasion at present.

[Vahe231991]

It's important, as with NASA and commercial entities, to separate the commercial from the government-operated prospects.

To me, the only peoples more on fire about spaceflight than Japan are the United Arab Emirates, and with similar accomplishments. JAXA have gone well, if not first, in two asteroid sample missions, recovering the Akatsuki Venus orbiter back to Venus (where it's still working since 2010) through incredible use of solar orbital mechanics after it missed its initial capture burn, and as a central partner in the ISS in both crew and cargo resupply.

While the MHI's H-3 is delayed but now proceeding well, JAXA's next-generation HTV-X will continue resupply for the ISS but, possibly, the lunar Gateway, and perhaps even support crew. Their government isn't in the way of commercial ventures such as Hakuto-R, which also has UAE's first spacecraft, a small rover. UAE is doing something that NASA has yet to do--a robotic lunar rover, which only China and the USSR have done. (Apollo's LRV were non-robotic cars with no science instruments and no autonomy beyond control of its TV camera from the ground.) UAE sent Hope, a Mars orbiter, arriving in 2020. It became the second country to reach Mars to begin an operational mission on its first try (counting launch and carrier spacecraft failures).

JAXA also flew (with the Akatsuki Venus orbiter) IKAROS, the first interplanetary solar sail spacecraft.

Not all recent JAXA work has been successful, but still awesome. Carried aboard Artemis I were two JAXA-sponsored cubesats. OMOTENASHI and EQUULEUS. EQUULEUS did fine and may still be fine doing its magnetosphere studies. But eyes were on OMOTENASHI, which was trying to go all Ranger 3/Luna 9 with an airbag-based lithobraking lunar landing. Sadly, that spacecraft (like others sitting too long in the ICPS after multiple launch delays) deployed DOA.

Of course, commercial US ventures such as Astrobotic are up as well for the Moon, with their Peregrine lander poised to fly atop the first Vulcan Centaur as early as April.

Looking ahead, JAXA's Multiple Moons Mission (MMX) is an outright space-first if it goes well (Russia tried this with Phobos-Grunt and Phobos 1 and 2). MMX will send a lander to the Martian moon Phobos, get a sample and return home. No one's touched down on Phobos, much less return, and this will be a great achievement for a space agency that's already shown mastery of asteroid sampling.

Looking more forward, JAXA has two observatories in work, and a curiously and humorously named gamma-ray study spacecraft called HiZ-GUNDAM. No word on if this one might also transform and protect us from alien invasion at present.

I remember that the IKAROS spacecraft made Japan the first country to launch a solar sail, because the Russian Cosmos-1 solar sail failed to reach orbit when it was launched in June 2005.

I'm not sure if HiZ-GUNDAM's name is a pun on the Gundam military fiction media franchise, although the HiZ-GUNDAM is only a civilian spacecraft that will be used for gamma-ray studies.