JAXA has plans to put an astronaut on the moon sometime around 2030, according to new proposals from the space agency. This is the first time JAXA has publicly explored sending astronauts anywhere beyond the International Space Station, a JAXA spokeswoman said Friday.
The idea is to first join a NASA-led mission in 2025 to build a space station in the moon’s orbit, part of a longer-term effort by NASA to reach Mars.
Tokyo hopes that contributing to the multinational mission and sharing Japanese technology will land it a coveted spot at the station, from which it could eventually put an astronaut on the moon, the spokeswoman said.
The plan was presented to an education ministry panel on Wednesday and a more formal blueprint is expected next year.
According to JAXA, it plans to make contributions to the multinational mission by developing water and air purifiers and technology to protect astronauts from radiation to be used for the space station.
It will also work on developing a probe to enable astronauts to move between the space station and the moon, using the technology of an unmanned probe it plans to send to the moon in fiscal 2019.
JAXA also proposed its plan to launch a project in 2022 to send an unmanned probe from the Earth to the moon to search for natural resources.
China and India are already looking to expand their ambitious space programs.
In November, China’s Shenzhou-11 spacecraft returned to Earth, bringing home two astronauts from the rising power’s longest orbital mission ever.
China plans to land the first probe ever on the dark side of the moon in 2018, another milestone. In 2016, China said it aims to land a man on the moon by 2036.
In June 2017, Yang Liwei, deputy director general of China Manned Space Agency saidChina is making preliminary preparations for a manned lunar landing mission. It will not take long for the project to get official approval and funding, Yang said during a group interview at the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX 2017).