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The
United States pledged in December to keep the ISS operational
through to 2030. Among Washington's programme partners, which
are Russia, Canada, Japan and the 11-nation European Space
Agency, Tokyo is the first to join the United States in
extending participation.
The space station, a science laboratory spanning the size of a
football field and orbiting about 250 miles (400 km) above
Earth, has been continuously occupied for more than two decades
under a partnership led by the United States and Russia.
Japan's announcement comes just days after NASA's
next-generation moon rocket blasted off from Florida in a
crewless voyage inaugurating the U.S. space agency's Artemis
exploration programme, in which Japan is also participating.
"ISS is inevitable as a place to verify technologies for the
Artemis programme. It is also an important venue for Japan-U.S.
cooperation," Nagaoka said at a signing ceremony for a Japan-U.S.
agreement on cooperation for a lunar space station called
Gateway.
Under the agreement, a Japanese astronaut will go aboard
Gateway, which is under development for the Artemis programme,
and Japan will supply batteries and other equipment for that
space station.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio
Kishida in May confirmed their intention to include a Japanese
astronaut in the programme, including its lunar surface
missions.
"We will maintain close cooperation with the United States to
realise a Japanese astronaut's landing on the moon in the second
half of the 2020s, which would be the first for non-Americans,"
Kishida said in a message read aloud at the ceremony.
(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and
Bradley Perrett)
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