JAXA Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

◦ Opening statement
In the last month, I visited space agencies in Europe and the United States to have an opportunity to talk to their leaders, although the time was very limited. Since assuming the JAXA president's post, I had been feeling an urgent need to see other spacefaring countries' agencies with my own eyes.

In mid-June, I first visited Europe to talk to Director General Dordain of the European Space Agency (ESA), Director General Popovkin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (ROSCOSMOS), Chief Executive Parker of the UK Space Agency, and Chairman Worner of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), respectively. Then I went to the European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC), a core R&D center of the ESA, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and its R&D facility in Koln, Germany, for inspections.

Regarding the budget scale in Europe, ESA's budget is about three times of that of JAXA. In addition, in the case of Europe, each country promotes its own space policy, and the French space budget (1.6 billion euros) and the German budget (1.21 billion euros) are tantamount to that of JAXA. The budgets of other European countries are smaller; still each country advances its own space policy based on its budget.

During my visit in Europe, my talks with ESA Director General Dordain were most impressive. He told me that space development entailed two aspects, international cooperation on one side and some sort of competition on the other, to move it forward. From my experience, this is true in most industries and in other fields. I very much empathized with him as I always believe that healthy development is facilitated based on cooperation and competition.

Talking about my impressions of the R&D facilities of each agency, I felt that R&D has been steadily and firmly progressing in Europe. The method of R&D progress there is similar to that of JAXA. Another impressive point is that some of their project environments were also very similar to ours. JAXA and ESA extended our cooperative agreement period for space components in June. Both of us are working in a project environment that is restricted to a certain extent. Both of us face some limits such as a market size that restricts our procurement of key components unlike the U.S., where more flexible and free procurement is possible. In my own opinion, such a restricted environment often positively promotes technological development. Therefore, it is an important factor for ESA-JAXA ties. I also heard that the ESA highly evaluated JAXA as an important partner. JAXA would like to do our best to meet ESA's expectations.

Last week, between July 8 thru 13, I went to the U.S. to visit the headquarters of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). I met many space-related people including the NASA and NOAA administrators. I also inspected the space development forefront at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC), a core center for manned space development, in Houston, the NASA Goddard Space Center, a key facility for space science and earth observations, in the suburbs of Washington DC, and Orbital Science Corporation, an American emerging mid-range company for satellite and launch vehicle development.

The experience there reminded me that the American philosophy of taking leadership in every area is a basic policy in the space field as we clearly observe this tendency in many other science and technology policies. I strongly felt that their challenging attitude with a strong will by exhibiting leadership even in some technologically difficult areas has prevailed through the space development field.

NASA's budget (17 billion dollars) is almost 10 times that of JAXA. Actually, the budget for the NASA JSC exceeds JAXA's, thus NASA's scale of operations is extremely broad. Against this backdrop, I felt that I was burdened with an assignment to ponder how to incorporate NASA's operations to our agency as well as to reconsider the unique Japanese method of space development. Concerning each project, I was told that JAXA was highly evaluated as a reliable partner for our high quality and sophisticated methods of work as I heard when I visited Europe.

One more point I would like to mention today is about NASA's idea for the International Space Station (ISS) project. First of all, this project cannot be achieved without international cooperation, and in that sense, NASA believes that the project is helpful not only for scientific international cooperation but it also has some aspects that are useful for securing national security and safety. I also heard that, in a broader sense, the ISS project is a scientific development activity that covers multiple characters and features. I felt that NASA's ideas were extremely sensible and advisable for JAXA to consider its participation in a project in the future.

Sorry for spending so much time talking about my visit to Europe and the U.S., but, through visiting those space agencies, I was reassured that JAXA's projects and activities are highly evaluated. On my side, I explained JAXA's plans based on the new Basic Plan on Space Policy. Everybody showed their understanding on our plans while reminding me that the real basis of our activities must be a philosophy of "space technology development," and asked my opinion on that regard. I told them that JAXA fully agreed on that point.

Now, let me change the topic. On July 2, JAXA announced our investigation results on unauthorized access to JAXA's server, which happened last April. JAXA confirmed the facts that information security incidents had happened repeatedly, thus we will fundamentally review our entire information security system to strengthen it with our very best efforts. Also, we have set up an outside advisory committee so that we can rebuild and enhance our information security system by receiving advice on our current weak points and areas to be improved.