BREMEN, Germany -- The European and Japanese space agencies have issued a joint statement on furthering cooperation on planetary defense, the moon, Mars and beyond.
JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa and ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher signed a joint statement Nov. 20 in Tsukuba, Japan, outlining new cooperation in areas including planetary defense, Earth observation, post-ISS low Earth orbit activities, space science and Mars exploration.
Both agencies pledged to deepen their partnership across these areas and work towards future impactful missions.
The statement commits the two agencies to accelerating studying potential cooperation for ESA's Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (RAMSES) mission, which seeks to study the asteroid Apophis which will make a close approach to Earth in 2029. The mission needs to be fully approved at the next ESA ministerial meeting in late 2025, but preliminary work is already underway.
The two agencies are also discussing potential collaborative small lander missions to Mars in the 2030s. These would leverage expertise in capabilities such as electric propulsion and entry, descent, and landing.
JAXA and ESA are also discussing planning for post-ISS LEO activities to meet scientific, societal, and economic goals. They will also examine potential collaboration in lunar exploration, including joint analogue testing and synergizing robotic missions, given commitments to Gateway and Artemis. ESA's new lunar analog facility could be opened to JAXA engineers. The two agencies will also continue work on demonstrating interoperability of lunar communication and navigation capabilities, leveraging ESA's Moonlight program.
In the realm of space science, the two agencies support continuing collaborative efforts in for the ESA-led New Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics mission, or Athena, as well as for the Medium-class missions candidates M-MATISSE and Plasma Observatory presently under competitive study. There will also be continued dialogue on ESA's large mission plans focusing on the moons of giant planets and JAXA's LiteBIRD mission.
The statement highlighted decades of existing productive cooperation including joint missions such as the BepiColombo mission to Mercury and the EarthCARE mission to study how clouds and aerosols affect the Earth's climate, and ESA and JAXA astronauts working together aboard the ISS.
The new collaboration between ESA and JAXA, termed "Next Big Cooperations," is set to drive societal progress, scientific innovation, and sustainable space exploration, addressing critical global issues such as climate change and planetary defense, according to the statement.
The statement was well-received by ispace, a private Japanese company engaged in lunar exploration with a presence in Europe. "As a global company leading lunar development with entities in Japan and Europe, we sincerely welcome the recent announcement by the ESA and JAXA," Takeshi Hakamada, ispace founder and CEO, said in a press statement.
"We have had the privilege of working with both space agencies on significant exploration efforts and welcome the acknowledgement of commercial opportunities 'with the aim of contributing to new scientific discovery as well as human exploration on the lunar surface," Hakamada added.
Meanwhile, Koichi Suzuki, deputy director for safety and mission assurance at JAXA, stated at the Space Tech Expo Europe in Bremen, Germany Nov. 21 that the agency was building on recent exploration and LEO achievements including the SLIM moon landing, the Astroscale ADRAS-J mission supported by Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration (CRD2), and EarthCARE.
In the future, Japan will return to the moon with the LUPEX south pole lunar landing in partnership with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), work on a crewed pressurized rover for the Artemis program, and move to demonstrate the removal of large debris from orbit. There will also be a focus on capabilities such as additive manufacturing.