The European Space Agency has deepened its relationship with its Japanese counterpart (JAXA) under a joint statement signed on 20 November.

The two agencies have worked closely together for decades, launching joint missions such as the BepiColombo mission to Mercury and the EarthCARE or Hakuryu mission to study how clouds and aerosols affect the Earth’s climate. ESA astronauts have worked alongside JAXA astronauts on the International Space Station.

The latest joint statement, signed by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and JAXA President Yamakawa Hiroshi in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, further strengthens this collaboration. 

It commits the two agencies to accelerate a study for collaboration on ESA’s Ramses mission to the asteroid Apophis that will pass by Earth in 2029. This could potentially include providing thermal infrared images and solar array wings as well as launch opportunities.

The joint statement reinforces ESA and JAXA cooperating on the Gateway programme to create a crewed space station orbiting the Moon. It encourages the two agencies to continue collaborating to tackle climate change, while exploring space for commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit. 

The new joint statement envisages the two agencies working jointly on lunar exploration, including each agency’s contribution to the Artemis programme – ESA’s Argonaut lunar cargo lander and JAXA’s pressurised lunar rover. JAXA engineers could use ESA’s recently opened lunar analogue facility to test lunar technologies on Earth. JAXA engineers coulduse ESA’s recently opened lunar analogue facility to test lunar technologies on Earth. Other possibilities include coordinating commercially provided small lunar rovers as well as the lunar polar exploration mission, and building on ESA’s Moonlight programme to create a lunar communications and navigation service by putting a commercial constellation of satellites around the Moon.

The joint statement advances discussions on a potential collaborative Mars mission that would send small-lander missions to the Red Planet, building on technologies developed by the two agencies that include electric propulsion and entry, descent and landing systems.

Finally, the two agencies have proposed to continue working together in space science, including the ESA-led New Athena X-ray telescope for high-energy astrophysics that is due to launch in 2037. In the longer term, ESA and JAXA will explore the possibilities for collaboration on the M-Matisse proposal to study the habitability of Mars and the Plasma Observatory  proposal to study the plasma around Earth, both of which are presently under competitive study. Possibilities also exist to work together on bigger and longer-term projects focussed on the moons of the giant planets and the JAXA-led LiteBird gravitational wave telescope.

While in Japan, the ESA Director General also signed a letter of intent with Japanese space innovation company CrossU, and spoke at the opening ceremony of Nihonbashi space week, which was held in a financial district in Tokyo that is burgeoning as a hub of Japan’s space industry.

The joint statement between ESA and JAXA is available online.