NASDA will have a seven year lease free period on Kiritimati followed by a 13 year lease at a baseline fee of 1.3 million Australian dollars (949,000 US) per year.

The Japanese space shuttle, code-named Hope-X, involves launching a singe stage H-IIA rocket from the Tanegashima Space Centre on Tanegashi Island off the southern tip of Kyushu Island, southern Japan), and landing it on a runway on Kiritimati.

The Hope-X would be a smaller version of the final full scale version which will land on a runway like the US Space Shuttle.

The Kiritimati region is set to become a major player in commercial space operations. Already the Sea Launch project, a joint Boeing-Russian-Norwegian company, has fired satellites from a floating platform to the south of the island.

Kiritimati, near the Equator, was the site in the 1950s of British and US atomic tests. Its a place of colourfully named villages: Banana, London and Poland.