With the arrival of April and start of a new fiscal year, JAXA has embarked on its Fifth Mid- to Long-term Plan with a whole set of new goals.
First, I would like to announce that I will continue to serve as JAXA’s President. I would sincerely appreciate your continued support.
We also have two new members joining our executive board: Senior Vice President WATANABE Sonoko and Vice President FUJIMOTO Masaki. Together, the executive team will remain fully committed to carrying out our duties.

Now that the Phase 5 Midium/Long-term Plan that covers seven years has begun, I would like to share the following three key points that we took into account when formulating this plan.

Based on these points, JAXA will fulfill the following five roles as a core institution in the field of aerospace research and development and a hub for interdisciplinary collaboration:

Pursuing these roles, JAXA will continue to undertake advanced research and development challenges, while returning the resulting achievements to society, to further maximize the impact of research and development, realize a safe and abundant society, and enhance Japan’s international presence.

Now, let me change the topic slightly. As you know, EXPO 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan has opened. JAXA also participates in the event, with a permanent exhibit titled “Standing on the Moon. And beyond…,” in the Future Life Village located on the west side of the venue. We offer visitors an immersive experience through high-resolution images and interactive, hands-on content. In the Japan Pavillion located on the east side of the venue, visitors can also see samples from the asteroids Itokawa and Ryugu on display. We believe this is a great opportunity for visitors to envision the future of society, inspired by the achievements and future prospects of space development. We look forward to welcoming many visitors to our exhibits at the EXPO, which is scheduled to remain open until October.

Astronaut Onishi has been aboard the ISS on his long duration mission for almost a month. He is currently working on various in-orbit tasks as planned, including demonstration experiments.
Working closely with JAXA Flight Control Team (JFCT), astronaut Onishi has conducted technological demonstrations on Internal Ball Camera2 (Int-Ball2), a newly developed the free-flying intravehicular camera robot, and carried out preparations for experiments aimed to examine a cellular mechanism that senses gravity. Going forward, he will conduct various experiments fully utilizing Kibo’s environment.
Astronaut Onishi will also assume the role of ISS Commander in the early hours of April 19 (JST), taking it over from Roscosmos astronaut Aleksey Ovchinin. Then, he will oversee the ISS crew and assume command until handing it over to the next commander before he leaves the ISS.

We are confident that, despite the numerous tasks to be conducted during his limited stay on the ISS, astronaut Onishi will continue to carry them out steadily in orbit, closely coordinating with the ground operations team and the researchers involved in the experiments.

As announced in JAXA press release on March 28, astronaut Yui, who has been undergoing training for his ISS expedition, is set to be aboard the Crew Dragon Spacecraft (Crew-11).
This will be his second space flight. Crew-11 is scheduled to be launched no earlier than July 2025. An update will be provided once the official launch date is confirmed.

Following astronaut Onishi, astronaut Yui’s mission will mark the second consecutive expedition aboard the ISS by Japanese astronauts. We expect them to pass the baton and enhance Japan’s presence in space activities. JAXA will continue to maintain and reinforce collaboration with its international partners.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to those who have supported us to date, including all ISS-related parties, organizations, and companies both in Japan and abroad. We would greatly appreciate your continued support.

JAXA and the National Institute of Polar Research participated in the Arctic Challenge for Sustainability Ⅱ (ArCSⅡ), a national project conducted between 2020 and March 2025. As part of this project, we have performed research and analyses by visualizing the temporal and spatial variations in the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extents, using observation data from microwave radiometers, including the one onboard the Global Change Observation Mission－Water (GCOM-W), also known as Shizuku.

The observation during the winter of 2025 revealed that the Arctic sea ice extent recorded the smallest annual maximum in over 40 years of satellite observations.
The white area in the image shows the Arctic sea ice extent as of March 20, 2025. The solid orange line shows the average sea ice edge observed on the same date during the 2010s (2010 to 2019), which enables a comparison with the sea ice extent in 2025. According to this comparison, the sea ice extent shows a declining trend in most sea areas, aside from the east of Greenland. The difference between the white area and the orange line stands out especially in the Sea of Okhotsk, marking the lowest level of sea ice extent in the 47-year observation era. One contributing factor to this dwindling sea ice is the persistent higher-than-average temperatures around the Arctic Ocean between December 2024 and February 2025, which made it difficult for the sea ice extent to expand.
The diminishing Arctic sea ice extent is closely associated with global climate change, making its impact on weather and marine environments a matter of concern. Thus, we will continue to monitor and analyze its state.
As I mentioned last month, these observation results have once again highlighted the critical importance of collecting global observation data and continuing research and analyses from the perspective of data continuity.

For our sea ice extent analyses, we use data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-2 (AMSR2) carried by GCOM-W. In fiscal 2025, we also plan to launch the Global Observing SATellite for Greenhouse gases and Water cycle (GOSAT-GW) with the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-3 (AMSR3), a successor of AMSR2, on board. JAXA will continue to make contributions to monitoring climate change and addressing global warming through sustained Earth observation efforts.