Why Japan?
By Beau Jarvis
Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates the global space industry will grow to $2.7 trillion in revenues (from $350 billion currently) over the next two to three decades, and Japan will be a crucial part of that growth. In 2017, the Japanese government announced Space Industry Vision 2030, solidifying its commitment to “doubling the market size of its space industry to 2.4 trillion Japanese Yen (or US$21 billion)” over the next decade.
I’ve long admired Japan’s space ecosystem, and it’s been exciting to watch a new cohort of space startups there tackle some of humanity’s biggest problems in space. ispace raised $90 million to build a lunar transporation system. AxelSpace just raised a huge Series B to accelerate its AxelGlobe Earth observation platform, and Synspective is making moves with its SAR (synthetic aperture radar) solution for sustainable and resilient urban development. Astroscale has scaled up to address the growing debris question in lower Earth orbit.
But it’s not just startups who are pushing the envelope — more mature Japanese companies are also joining the commercial space race. Take Canon, for instance: their electronics division has announced a constellation of over a hundred Earth observation satellites, and has already launched test satellites.
And JAXA, Japan’s space agency, continues to push the envelope. Its Super Low Altitude Test Satellite (SLATS, or TSUBAME) is a technology demonstration that relies on an ion engine (which “uses fuel 10x more efficiently than gas jets”) to maintain a very low, sub-300 km orbit.
It could not be a more exciting time to be part of Japan’s space economy. When I joined Phase Four last year, the first person I reached out to was Hiroshi Nashimoto, the president and CEO of Sunrise, a Japan-based aerospace technology company. I’m thrilled we’ve officially partnered with Sunrise to bring Maxwell, our turn-key propulsion system for small satellites, to the growing ecosystem of cutting-edge space organizations there.
US and Japanese space policy have made it simple and straightforward for companies like Phase Four to collaborate with innovative space companies across the Pacific in Japan. Where international cooperation was a challenge during the original Cold War space race, it’s accelerating progress in our new commercial space race.
