Since firing its first satellite into orbit 20 years ago, Japan`s space program has proceeded in fits and starts, hobbled by heavy reliance on U.S. technology, a stingy government budget and launch schedules dictated by the allegedly tender sensitivities of fish.
Despite all that, Japan last week took its most dramatic leap into space yet as it became the third nation, after the United States and the Soviet Union, to launch a spacecraft toward orbit around the Moon. The liftoff of the 93-foot-tall unmanned MUSES-A spacecraft from the Kagoshima complex marked the first lunar mission since the Soviet Union landed a Luna-24 research probe on the Moon in 1976.
In February 1970, Japan became the first Asian nation to send a satellite into Earth orbit. But that blastoff from the tiny Kagoshima Space Center here on the island of Kyushu-and later launchings from a rival space facility on another island 60 miles to the south-was followed by angry protests from local fishermen.
The roar of rockets, claimed the fishermen, was ”annoying” their prey and reducing the catch.
A compromise was reached when Japan`s two space agencies-the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science and the larger National Space Development Agency, or NASDA-agreed to make payments to fishermen and to limit launchings to two 45-day periods, one in summer and the other in winter.
More recently, the push to build an independent and potentially profitable space technology has suffered setbacks more difficult to solve-but also some impressive successes, including last week`s launch.
”Our goal is to use Japanese technologies to develop a solely Japanese space program,” said Tomifumi Godai, executive director of NASDA.
”Eventually, we hope to send manned expeditions into space; that`s a pillar of our program.”
By the year 2000, Japan hopes to have acquired a 20-percent share of the commercial space market. For now, however, its main aim is to catch up with the West.
The centerpiece of that crusade is the development of the so-called H-2 rocket, which will be the first wholly Japanese-made heavy lift launch vehicle. Like the U.S. Titan series and the European Ariane, it will be capable of putting two-ton satellites into low Earth orbit.
Japan had hoped to launch the H-2 next year. Much to the embarrassment of NASDA scientists, however, the H-2`s newly designed first stage rocket blew up during two test firings last year. The designers went back to their drawing boards while agency officials glumly conceded that the H-2 will probably not make its maiden launch until 1993.
Nonetheless, operating on a combined annual budget of only $1.06 billion- roughly a 25th of what the U.S. spends on its civilian and military space programs-Japan has scored some impressive successes. In 1986, it sent a pair of probes to study Halley`s Comet, the first Japanese spacecraft ever sent beyond Earth orbit. The following year, Japan won international recognition when its Astro-C satellite relayed valuable data on X-rays and other emanations from the brightest supernova, or exploding star, observed in modern history.
Beyond the moon
Japanese scientists see the current MUSES-A mission as a symbolic turning point for its space program.
”We are already looking beyond the Moon toward interplanetary exploration,” said Hiroki Matsuo, who headed the project for the Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science.
The MUSES-A mission involves two satellites boosted into space by a three-stage, solid-fuel MRS-2 rocket built by Nissan, Japan`s second-largest automaker. The two connected spacecraft will make two Earth orbits before a final-stage motor fires, sending them toward a March 18 rendezvous with the Moon.
The trip to the Moon is slow, compared to the three-day trips of the Apollo astronauts, because the rocket has much less power, and therefore sends the probe toward its target at a slower speed.
Just before crossing the Moon`s path, the smaller satellite-only 14 inches in diameter-will separate and enter a tight lunar orbit. The other craft will use the moon`s gravitational field to swing itself into a sweeping, elliptical orbit around both the Earth and Moon.
The mission`s primary purpose is to test the satellites` own systems. The engineering data gleaned will aid in designing equipment for future expeditions, including landing a seismograph on the lunar surface sometime in the 1990s.
The craft will also take thousands of photographs of potential Moon landing sites and test equipment designed to send interplanetary radio and television signals.
Meanwhile, NASDA plans to put a sophisticated marine observation satellite into orbit this week. The launch is significant because the MOS-1b satellite is one of the most advanced designs ever manufactured entirely in Japan.
”We believe by the end of the decade Japan will be playing a big role in space,” said Godai.
Outside observers agree, although they note that Japan has a huge amount of catching up to do-its space program is said to lag at least a decade behind that of the United States.
Space manufacturing
”The Japanese government has targeted space as a sector it wants to develop at a fast pace,” said Stephen E. Marvin, a Tokyo-based analyst with Jardine Fleming Securities Ltd. ”That commitment is likely to result in a series of important technological and commercial advances.”
In reaching for the stars, Japan has a goal of grabbing at least a 20 percent share of the world market for so-called space ”applications” by the end of the decade. Potential space businesses include manufacturing and processing of materials in space; spin-off technologies from satellite and launch projects; and communications, including the direct broadcasting of high-definition television signals and remote detection of minerals.
”Exploring the universe solely for scientific research is a very low priority for the Japanese,” said Marvin. ”They have their eyes set on commercial exploitation and defense technology.”
According to the U.S. Center for Space Policy, the space business will be worth $25 billion a year by the year 2000.
Some Japanese firms are hatching even more ambitious schemes. Shimuzu Corp., the world`s largest construction company, has begun plans for a 64-room, doughnut-shaped orbiting hotel. Pie-in-the-sky, perhaps, but the company is serious enough to have committed $6 million to study space construction projects.
A company spokesman reckoned that wealthy Japanese guests would be happy to cough up $176,000 per person for a stay in a hotel floating 281 miles above Earth.
Another construction giant, Ohbayashi Corp., has plans to erect ”Moon City 2050,” a complex of labs, offices, hotels and farms for high-speed, low- gravity cultivation of seeds and crops to sustain the moon dwellers.
Lunar real estate
More immediately, Japanese engineering and construction firms plan to join forces with the United States to build a manned lunar base. The Ohbayashi Corp. has invested millions toward building of a lunar base technology research center in Florida. One goal of the project is devising ways of manufacturing cement on the Moon in order to build the base.
Japan is already committed to the $2 billion construction of a space module that will be attached to the larger American space station Freedom, planned for 1996.
”In past international ventures, other nations took the initiative and Japan took a passive role,” Godai told reporters visiting NASDA`s Tanegashima Space Center last week. ”Now, we are hoping to take the initiative in space.”
Japan got a late start in space primarily because its constitutional ban on offensive weapons meant it did not develop the intercontinental missile technology upon which the United States and Soviet Union built their space industries. Until recently, its program emphasized the launching of small, relatively inexpensive rockets carrying scientific instruments and lightweight satellites.
”Our philosophy has been to use small rockets and small satellites so we can have more launchings,” said Jun Nishimura of the Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science-which has conducted 37 launchings since 1970 without a failure. ”Good space science does not need to be expensive space science.”
Perhaps. But the space-on-a-shoestring approach is another reason Japan has lagged so far behind. Space officials now say they need far more money than is budgeted if they are to complete the ambitious rocket and spacelab programs to which the government has committed. Japan has increased space financing about 9 percent a year over the last decade; NASDA`s Godai said that increase must be doubled if the agency is to realize such goals as launching its own space shuttle in the late 1990s and landing a man on the moon early in the next century.
”Government policy calls for a strong space program, but we are not getting a sufficient part of the national budget to complete that policy,”
Godai said.
A private project
The slack, for the most part, has been taken up by private companies so eager to develop space technology that they have spent millions to subsidize government projects, including the MUSES-A Moon launch. But the companies have begun to scold the government for chasing big dreams with a small budget.
”The space field is the key to winning the high-tech competition with the United States and Europe,” said Tadahiro Sekimoto, president of NEC Corporation, a major electronics firm that, with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, built the two satellites for the MUSES-A project. ”The government should be spending more.”
Despite Japan`s lofty ambitions, some analysts doubt it can build a wholly independent space program.
”Japan will be heavily involved in space by the end of the decade, but mainly as an indispensable contractor,” said Marvin of Jardine Fleming. ”I really can`t see them building an independent, economically-viable space system on their own-unless, of course, they buy Rockwell or Morton Thiokol. Though I suppose that`s not out of the question.”
