The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) initiated a collaborative effort aiming at establishment of the COVID-19 Earth Observing Dashboard in May 2020, and extended its scope to global environmental change later in March 2021. In May of this year, three years after the start of its initiative, Earth Observing Dashboard has reached the stage of total renewal. Noting the increasing use of the joint Dashboard and the continuous users’ requests for more information, NASA, ESA, and JAXA agreed to continue through June 2024 to advance their joint work in global understanding of the changing environment with human activities.

For the text of NASA-ESA-JAXA Joint Declaration:
Joint Declaration on trilateral collaboration by NASA, ESA and JAXA

Related Information:
Renewal of the Earth Observing Dashboard, Joint analysis website of JAXA, NASA, and ESA using Earth observation data

In view of the recent deterioration of the on-orbit environment due to advances made in space development and a large number of future launch plans, space debris countermeasures are becoming increasingly important for sustainable space development and utilization. The 10th Space Debris Workshop will be held as one of the largest space debris discussion forums for all stakeholders in Japan, providing information on domestic and international technical trends related to space debris issues, and fostering active cooperation among researchers.
We invite presentations (oral and posters) for English and Japanese sessions with the aim of providing a forum for wider-ranging discussions.

The 10th Space Debris Workshop will be held at the JAXA Chofu Aerospace Center and online.
However, it may be changed to an all-online event depending on the COVID-19 situation.

On June 28, Dr. Yamakawa Hiroshi, President of JAXA had a bilateral meeting with Dr. Philippe Baptiste, Chairman and CEO of CNES, French National Centre for Space Studies at the occasion of CNES’visit to Japan. In the meeting, Dr. Yamakawa celebrated the 60th anniversary of CNES and discussed current and future cooperation.
The meeting was preceded by the JAXA-CNES Strategic Committee on June 27, co-chaired by respective Vice Presidents where an in-depth discussion was held on cooperation management and potential area of collaboration.

During the stay, CNES delegation paid a visit to JAXA Tsukuba Space Center on June 29 and joined the CNES 60th anniversary event held on June 30 at Miraikan, Tokyo.

CNES has been one of the most important partners for JAXA having a long and diverse history of collaboration, and the ties were further strengthened with this visit.

In order to demonstrate its commitment to the long-term sustainability of outer space activities, JAXA established "JAXA Sustainable Space Principles" as follows. The Principles were presented at the 65th Session of the UN Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPOUS).

“JAXA Sustainable Space Principles”
JAXA commits to the following three principles to ensure that a viable space environment can be passed on to future generations and that the humankind can continue to obtain the benefits of outer space.

①Together with space related entities from around the world, JAXA commits to the preservation of the outer space as a realm of all mankind.

②JAXA brings the benefits of outer space exploration and utilization equally to the present and future generations.

③By developing innovative technologies, JAXA contributes to the resolution of challenges associated with the promotion of sustainable space activities.

These commitments serve as our guiding principle to achieve the “JAXA’s priority areas for sustainable outer space” in JAXA’s basic policy on the SDGs.
COPOUS Technical Presentation:

JAXA successfully demonstrated automatic acquisition and tracking technology in optical communication experiments of 1.5㎛ band between the optical ground station (60cm) at JAXA Nyukasa optical observatory in Ina city, Nagano prefecture and the OSIRIS optical communication terminal of the Institute of Ccommunications and Navigation of German Aerospace Center(DLR) on the Flying Laptop satellite of the University of Stuttgart.

JAXA has been conducting the research and development of technologies which receives the weak downlink light from a satellite by a small telescope of an optical ground station and automatically acquires and tracks it by the image processing technology for future practical applications for high-speed optical communications between space and ground.

Based on our joint research between JAXA and DLR*1, we conducted optical communication experiments between the JAXA optical ground station(60cm) and the optical communication terminal (OSIRIS-V1*2 ) on the small satellite (Flying Laptop), built and operated by the University of Stuttgart. In this experiment, it was confirmed that the weak downlink light was automatically acquired and very accurately tracked by our developed image processing technology and the downlink light was received and consequently the automatic acquisition and tracking technology was realized.

In this automatic acquisition and tracking technology, an automatic function of discriminating, acquiring, guiding the light from a high-speed flying object to the center of field of view and continuing to track it sequentially by controlling the azimuth and elevation of the telescope through tracking sensors for wide and narrow angles on the optical ground station, was demonstrated by our developed image processing technology. At the optical ground station, a unique fiber with a larger incident aperture and a mechanism to amplify received light are incorporated to realize a more compact receiver system.

Optical communication technology between space and ground is expected to be utilized in high-speed communications for commercial satellites and the moon and planetary missions as communication measures of high-capacity and high-speed communications without constraints of frequency bandwidth and others.
It is expected that demonstrated technology will contribute to expansions of the future utilization by downsizing the receiver system of the optical ground stations and reducing operational burdens through it and also it is considered it can be further used for other applications, because of automatic acquisition and tracking of the light from high-speed flying objects. We will continue to work on acquiring necessary technologies, including two-way optical communications.