Japan To Continue Cooperating With Russia In Space - JAXA

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th February, 2021) The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency plans to continue cooperating with Russia in space, including conducting joint experiments with medically-important proteins and the electrostatic levitation furnace (ELF), the head of JAXA Moscow office Yoshio Wada told Sputnik.

"We have already made a decision to continue the experiments [with medically-important proteins] until December 2024," Wada confirmed.

Medical studies of proteins have been ongoing since 2009 during� which time, the ISS crews conducted 17 experiments. According to Wada, the results are good and several drugs have already been developed based on them. However, the drugs are yet to be mass produced in Japan as the process usually takes some time, he said.

The Japanese side also expressed its willingness to cooperate with Russia on the experiments with the electrostatic levitation furnace, installed on the Japanese Experiment Module Kibo onboard the International Space Station (ISS). It allows to experiment with and observe properties of materials with a high melting point, which would be impossible to do on Earth.

Moreover, JAXA is willing to help Russian astronauts with installing various objects on the outer hull of the ISS, namely the Japanese module Kibo, to study space environment effects.

Another prospective project for closer cooperation, Wada says, is the Russian-Spanish World Space Observatory-Ultraviolet (WSO-UV) for observing exoplanets, or Spektr-UV, scheduled for launch in 2025.

"As far as we understand in JAXA, apart from the main telescope, the apparatus will also have several other units installed, such as a spectrograph unit, a field camera unit and an ultraviolet spectrograph for exoplanet observation. We are currently discussing with Roscosmos the deal for developing the spectrograph for observing exoplanets," Wada stated.

He stressed that so far no agreement on the Spektr-UV has been reached.

As per the agreement between country members of the project, the ISS will be in exploitation until December 2024. A possible extension of this period is still under discussion.