JAXA annually holds the JAXA Symposium to report about its activities. In fiscal 2021, the Agency organized the event online with a focus on the opening of a new era for international space exploration. About this symposium, SASAKI Atsumi, Public Affairs Department, says as follows:

"In the world, space travels became a reality also for civilians and JAXA recruited new astronaut candidates. Space is thus becoming a place accessible for anyone, and in the near future, space travels, including those to the moon, might become something not special. As expectations for such future are increasing, questions are being raised by the public, such as "what place is space/the moon?" and "How can we live on the moon or on Mars?" In response, in the symposium we briefed on the findings made by our past explorations, challenges that we plan to embrace and life in space through lectures and talks." She then continues to introduce the measures devised to foster bidirectional communication with online audience: "We included a quiz session in which the audience could participate by using their smartphones and a game that they could enjoy playing on the screen."

In the questionnaire survey conducted targeting the audience, respondents made comments, such as the following: "As I now have more interest in living on the moon or on Mars with more specific details about it being introduced recently, I have found the event quite interesting," and "I participated in the sessions with my child and found all of them interesting. We had wonderful time, although I initially thought that the symposium might be difficult for us."
You can enjoy viewing the archival video of the Symposium by accessing the following website!

Archival video of the JAXA Symposium (in Japanese only):