JAXA recently held two symposiums, the JAXA Industrial Collaboration Symposium was held on Jan. 27, and a symposium for International Space Station utilization was held on Jan. 31. Both of these events focused on space utilization.
The symposiums intended to be more interactive rather than just presenting engineering verification results, thus each department in charge planned mainly to hold opinion exchange sessions and discussions on challenges for space utilization.
For collaboration with the industry, we have been engaging in campaign-type activities for facilitating people from companies in non-space fields to learn more about space, then provide consultation for space utilization by establishing a new department called the "Program Promotion Office." We will continue such activities to make people feel closer to space.
Concerning the use of the “Kibo,” we will additionally contrive new ideas for selecting utilization themes. I think that offering the Kibo as a national laboratory may be one possibility. Basically, a creator of a cutting-edge facility or device and its beneficiary are often different parties such as in the case of a super computer of which the inventor and a person who enjoys its academic results and economic benefits are different. In the same manner, a large facility like the SPring-8 is a type of national laboratory. The Kibo can be one such national laboratory. We would like to take one more step to facilitate the Kibo’s utilization in the private sector through activities by the Program Promotion Office to deepen understanding of private companies such as pharmaceuticals.

The GPM core observatory launch by H-IIA F23 will be held on Feb. 28.