Astronaut FURUKAWA Satoshi, who returned to Earth in March 2024, has come back temporarily to Japan after having completed the rehabilitation program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the US. Last and this weeks, he took this opportunity to pay a courtesy call on Prime Minister KISHIDA Fumio, Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology MORIYAMA Masahito, Minister of State for Space Policy TAKAICHI Sanae, and other cabinet members.
JAXA will hold a relevant press conference and a mission debriefing on June 17 and 23, respectively. The debriefing session will take place in The University of Tokyo’s Yasuda Auditorium, the main venue, and a number of public viewing sites set up across the country to receive the live video streaming of the session. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the science museums and centers and other organizations for offering cooperation to this event.

Next, I will give a brief about the “EarthCARE” satellite, a cloud, aerosol and radiation explorer mission jointly developed by Japan and the European Space Agency (ESA). I am pleased to tell you that the satellite was successfully launched on May 29.
I have received a report that, at present, the “EarthCARE” satellite as well as its onboard equipment are operating smoothly, particularly by confirming the good initial performance of the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR). We will move forward steadily with this mission.

I would also like to provide an update on Advanced Land Observing Satellite-4 “DAICHI-4” (ALOS-4). At the end of May, we unveiled the satellite at the Tanegashima Space Center. We also conducted an cryogenic propellant filling test for the third H3 Launch Vehicle. Following the test, preparations for the launch scheduled for June 30 of DAICHI-4 aboard the third H3 Launch Vehicle are progressing smoothly at the launch site.

DAICHI-4 is equipped with the latest model of synthetic aperture radar, a major feature of the DAICHI series and a strong technology developed by Japan over many years. Capitalizing on this technology, DAICHI-4 will engage in the following four missions:
1. Contribute to swift assessment of the disaster situation by using all-weather observation capabilities;
2. Contribute to National Resilience by using high-accuracy crustal movement and ground deformation monitoring capabilities;
3. Contribute to assessment of the marine condition; and
4. Address global-scale issues.

Through these missions, JAXA will help address an array of important challenges, such as: responding promptly to disaster situations; detecting geological anomalies in their early stage, chiefly related to ground deformation and volcanic activity; and evaluating the status of forest resources and agricultural resources, which is a global-scale issue.

Working closely with members of DAICHI-4 and H3 projects and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. and other partners for the development and operation of the projects, we will proceed, with due care and attention, with the preparations for the planned launch of the satellite on June 30 and its on-orbit operation.

On April 26, the government announced the Basic Policy and the Implementation Policy relating to the Space Strategy Fund. As described in the Basic Policy, the Space Strategy Fund has been established primarily to promote the private sector-led space technology development, and JAXA is responsible for the management of the Fund rather than using it to engage in research and development. Thus, the Fund is set to massively bolster support for private-sector companies and universities to pursue appropriate activities. In response to these policies, JAXA is accelerating preparations for receiving applications from July in sequence, specifically by preparing the application guidebook, organizing administration functions, developing rules and regulations, and publishing information internally and externally.

One important preparation process was setting up the steering board to take charge of the general administration and overall coordination of the Fund. To fill the post of chairing the board, the Program Director (PD), we selected Mr. Masayasu Ishida, President and CEO of the SPACETIDE foundation, who assumed the office on June 1.
SPACETIDE is a foundation formed to promote private-sector space business. Mr. Ishida was a founding member of the foundation, and is currently its management team leader. In his past career, he arranged many cross-industrial activities, such as hosting an international space business conference inviting business leaders from 20 industries and 20 countries, while working for a business consulting firm over 20 years providing support to business and government organizations engaged in diverse industries including space. Considering him as being qualified for running the Fund for a medium to long term from the viewpoints of technology and business alike, we believe that he will play the role of the PD of the Fund appropriately,

Also, the present Space Strategy Fund Preparatory Office will be reorganized into the new “Space Strategy Fund Department” to go into effect on June 1. To build the new division, we are collecting a diverse range of persons who have developed their career by working for banks and other financial institutions, manufacturers, or other corporations to engage in fund administration as well as government employees from central and regional ministries and agencies. These professionals from the outside will work with responsible employees from JAXA to carry out necessary processes, including performing procedures for receiving and reviewing applications, in order to promote the project from the viewpoints of technology and business alike.

With this organization in place, we will begin receiving applications for the five selected themes related to transportation, satellite and exploration, from early July, and will continue in sequence.
Going forward, information on application for the Fund will be posted on the Space Strategy Fund Project page within JAXA’s website.

The next topic is also about collaboration activities with the private sector. I will introduce two subjects: indirect investment and business co-creation. Specifically, I will give a brief report on activities of the two recent programs run by the Business Development and Industrial Relations Department, which is responsible for forming business partnerships and creating collaboration opportunities.

The first is related to JAXA’s investment functions. JAXA carried out an indirect investment in Frontier Innovations Fund I.
We operate indirect investment functions targeting venture capital funds that chiefly support business operators utilizing achievements resulting from JAXA’s research and development activities, especially its intellectual properties.
Frontier Innovations Fund I was newly established to invest primarily in startups, with the aim of creating, developing, and expanding sustainable venture business ecosystems in the space-related sector.
This was implemented according to the relevant investment policy for building a well-balanced portfolio by selecting targets not only from among space ventures but also non-space technology startups looking to create innovative synergies by applying space technology, and thus it represents JAXA’s first indirect investment program. We also considered the possibility of building a space industry ecosystem and encouraging open source innovation through bringing together technologies from different fields.
The resent indirect investment was made based on the Act on Activation of the Creation of Science and Technology Innovation, making JAXA Japan’s first National Research and Development Agency to carry out an investment program of its kind.
With the two major funding mechanisms, namely, the Space Strategy Fund, which I described earlier, and investment functions aimed at attracting private “risk money” mainly from financial institutions and investors to space-related businesses, JAXA will maximize the potential of these capabilities in order to help further develop the space industry that is expanding globally while supporting the growth of Japan’s space startups.

The second is related to business co-creation activities conducted in the framework of J-SPARC. The JAXA Space Innovation through Partnership and Co-creation (J-SPARC) is a research and development program that aims to create new space related-businesses through collaborations between JAXA and mainly private-sector companies. Since its launch, a rough total of 200 private business and other organizations have participated in the program.

One of the latest J-SPARC projects was the collaborative business demonstration initiated on June 13 by Dentsu Inc., Tsumagoi Village Agricultural Cooperatives (JA Tsumagoi), and jaxa.
This constitutes a new phase of the business concept co-creation project started in July 2022 by Dentsu and JAXA to conduct market research and examine the business concept. Advancing the project over about 21 months since then, we gained sufficient confidence in putting it into practical application and shifted to the collaborative business demonstration to perform feasibility study from fiscal 2024.

The project aims to promote agricultural product sales while tackling social issues. The plan is that satellite data and weather information will be used to predict the best harvest time of vegetables, say cabbage, and ensure the well-timed advertising placement and sales activities of retailers for related products, such as seasonings, right when the harvest amount of cabbage begins to grow; and the prediction data will also be utilized to avoid overharvesting in order to prevent waste of farm produce that would otherwise take place. From this fiscal year, JA Tsumagoi joined the project. The new member brings in valuable information resources, including shipment data of cabbage, accurate information of local weather and field conditions, and feedback on analysis results of harvest time prediction data, which will help improve the prediction accuracy for the shipment time and volume and market prices and achieve the real-time optimization of advertising placement timing for related products.

Going forward, Dentsu, JA Tsumagoi and JAXA will promote the data-driven supply-demand optimization process through the co-creation project, thus contributing to achieving a sustainable society.

The Aviation Technology Directorate, in cooperation with agencies in charge of disaster response and crisis management, conducts research and development of D-NET, the communication platform system for multiple disaster management agencies to centrally control their activities and share information mutually when operating in response to disaster or crisis. D-NET has already been employed in actual operations for disaster response and crisis management.
Specifically, it was used in Kumamoto when the region was hit by heavy rainfalls in July 2020, and also for the successful management of the Tokyo Olympic/Paralympic Games.
The system allowed for more efficient and safer performance of helicopters operated by individual agencies independently, and a significantly shorter time for coordination needed to control the operation of multiple aircraft, compared with conventional methods. These advantages were highly evaluated by the users.

More recently, the system was used in the Noto Peninsula when the region was hit by a major earthquake in January 2024. Based on the agreement concluded with the Fire and Disaster Management Agency for promoting technical cooperation, JAXA sent its employees to the Ishikawa Prefectural Government to provide the local disaster response force with technical support for operating D-NET. On May 23rd, in recognition of contribution made by these activities to safe operation of the Emergency Rescue Team’s Air Unit and rescue of human life, JAXA received a letter of appreciation from the Commissioner of Fire and Disaster Management Agency.
At the same time, the recent technical support activities gave us an opportunity to identify issues related to the operation of aircraft, including unmanned aircrafts, in disaster situations, especially for information sharing functions. We also found out the need for improving functions and performance of unmanned aircraft systems. For the issues identified, we will aim to develop improvement measures as part of future research and development efforts.

In this context, JAXA, as representative of the joint research team, has recently submitted applications for two research themes regarding the aircraft operation management technology used in times of disaster, and the both were selected. The two themes were related to the “operation safety management technology for aircraft, including drones, that can be applied to disaster and other emergency response,” one of the R&D themes set under the government-run Key and Advanced Technology R&D through Cross Community Collaboration Program (K Program).

The two research themes are: operation safety management technology; and unmanned aircraf technology. For the first theme of operation safety management technology, we are planning to develop a successor D-NET system project. The plan for the second theme of drone technology is to maintain and advance the technology cultivated in the past by the Aviation Technology Directorate.

In line with these plans, we will promote research and development for each theme in cooperation with research partners from the business and university sectors. Major development targets for each are: information sharing and judgement assistance processes that allow different agencies to operate their manned and unmanned aircraft efficiently and smoothly in coordination with each other; and drone systems enabling long-duration and long-distance flights under night-time or other visually challenging conditions.

And, we are also looking at practical applications of techniques and findings that are determined as sufficiently effective as a result of these research and development activities. In pursuing practical application, we will expand the scope of partnership to go beyond the aerospace field, and conduct trend surveys on private-sector businesses engaging in disaster response and the situation of research and development as well as equipment and systems related to disaster response in other fields. We will promote these activities, seeking for partnerships with various organizations, with the objective of improving Japan’s disaster response and crisis management capabilities, thus contributing to ensuring the nation’s safety and security.