JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, wants to put people on the moon before 2030. But they won’t go on their own rockets instead it will be a cooperative effort.
If JAXA wants to get in on a moon mission it will have to hitch a ride with either NASA’s planned mission to build a space station in lunar orbit in 2025 or a later mission to seek out lunar ice deposits. To get in on such a mission Japan is offering to contribute technology to the effort, though they haven’t specified precisely which tech it will contribute. More details are expected next year.
According to The Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, JAXA hopes to land an astronaut on the Moon in order to investigate the possibility of ice near the Moon’s south pole. The 2025 NASA-led multinational mission will be an endeavor to begin building a space station, with a side mission to further explore the Moon hoping to find ice deposits that can be transformed into rocket fuel. JAXA is aiming to create the technology to perform this transformation. This operation would more than likely require a moon base would be valuable to any nation.
A lunar space station will offer a base for a number of countries, like the U.S. and China, with hopes to explore the moon and other long distance space explorations, like a mission to Mars, in 2030 and beyond. Japan may or may not be chosen to join the mission and it is ambiguous at this point what Japan is fully offering. JAXA proposal, which is still pending review, was put before the Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. According to CNN, the final reports will be available for Japan’s International Space Exploration Forum in MArch 2018.
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