WASHINGTON – NASA has signed an agreement with the Japanese government that brings the agencies closer to ending Japan’s roles in the Artemis program.
The agreement, called the Joint Exploration Declaration of Intent, was signed at the end of July 9 in a virtual meeting between NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, in the United States, and Koichi Hagiuda, Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Japanese government technology. , in Japan.
“Today’s signing of this declaration of intent builds on the long history of successful cooperation between the United States and Japan in space,” Bridenstine said in a brief statement on the agreement. “We appreciate Japan’s strong support for Artemis and look forward to extending the strong partnership we have enjoyed on the International Space Station to cislunar space, the lunar surface and beyond.”
None of the governments published the text of the statement, but they described the document as a description of Japan’s roles in human and robotic exploration. That would include contributions to the lunar entrance and exploration of the lunar surface.
Japanese authorities said earlier this year that they expected to have a memorandum of understanding with NASA by spring regarding contributions to Artemis. Yoshikazu Shoji, director of the international relations and research department of the Japanese space agency JAXA, said in January that Japan was interested in providing components such as batteries and tanks for Gateway modules, data on the moon’s surface and logistics of Gateway using its new HTV- X cargo spaceship.
In the long term, both JAXA and the Japanese industry have proposed developing a pressurized rover for later human missions, something that NASA has welcomed. “It is like the habitat of a space station, which holds two people for 14 days, but it is on wheels,” said Mark Kirasich, acting director of NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems division and formerly manager of NASA’s Orion program. , during a session of the NASA Exploration Science Forum on July 10. “It’s like an RV to the moon.”
He said that NASA considered it important to involve JAXA in a “main surface element” such as a pressurized rover, even though NASA had already been doing studies of a pressurized lunar rover. “There was an idea that even though we’ve done a lot of work, we allow the Japanese to lead the development of a pressurized rover,” he said.
NASA will still develop a pressureless rover, like the one used in the last three Apollo missions, for previous Artemis missions. The Japanese pressurized rover will probably not be ready until the end of the decade. Kirasich said NASA will hold an acquisition strategy meeting this week to create a program office for that rover and plan to acquire the rover from the industry. The goal is to have that rover on the moon by 2025, delivered by a robotic lander through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
