Tokyo - January 2, 1998 - For the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) the note of cautious optimism signaled by president Isao Uchida early in the year evaporated during the second half of 1997.
In February, Uchida told Japan Space Net that NASDA was entering a "very severe phase," for budgeting. While noting that the upcoming dual launch of NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and NASDA's Engineering Test Satellite VII was "a test case to not betray the world's confidence in Japanese technology."
But as NASDA takes stock of 1997 it will find and agency that has lost direction and confidence in its ability to catch up with the international space industry.
Over the past three years the problems have continued to accelerate with spectacular mission failures that could even now see the latest engineering satellite ETS-7 and its year long remote robotics program end in failure.
For the US government however, confidence in Japan's ability to continue a fulsome commitment to the International Space Station should remain unchanged. But the cost for Japan's own engineering programs will be a wholesale gutting of programs such as the unmanned space truck Hope, and the small to medium lift program that was finally starting to pay off with the M5.
In late January in Tokyo NASA, NASDA and the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) consolidated cooperation on the Origins program, with accords on information and technology exchange regarding Mars exploration.
Then in May, NASDA and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales agreed in Paris to begin research into networking the Advanced Land Observing Satellite, due for launch in 2002, with a French satellite to develop an environmental disaster monitoring system.
On May 31 NASDA hosted the Heads of Agency meeting to decide international space station's revised assembly sequence, at Tsukuba Space Center, raising Japan's international profile and showcasing the Japanese Experimental Module, one of the few pieces of station hardware on schedule and on budget. On June 2, NASDA astronaut Koichi Wakata was confirmed as a mission specialist on STS-92.
Another major success was scored in August aboard STS-85 with the successful completion of experiments by the Manipulator Flight Demonstration by Jan Davis and Steve Robinson. The robot arm is a prototype version of the Remote Manipulator System arm which the Japan Experiment Module will use for loading and unloading supplies. Click on image for cool shuttle bay orbital desktop
And in general, NASDA's shuttle missions accomplished their aims. A series of protein crystal growth missions on Spacehab on STS-84 in May. were conducted successfully, while Japan's first EVA, that of Takao Doi aboard STS-87 in November gave the year a positive twist.
Meanwhile NASDA's H2A development program, brought forward one year to 1999, suffered a series of glitches when mission duty cycle firing tests on two prototype models of the rocket's core booster engine, LE-7A, revealed design weaknesses, with a nozzle meltdown and damage discovered in pipes above the combustion chamber damage in May, then cracks appeared in the combustion chamber itself during tests in November. Problems then began occurring in the LE-5B engine during December firing tests of the second stage engine; which also needs to be ready for a H2 launch in 1999.
Despite the problems, managers are determined to keep these critical development items on schedule, with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries picking up redesign and related costs - though some NASDA officials deny this, while Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' officials refused to comment on the affair.
The H2A development program also provided some comic relief when NASDA badly misjudged the environmental impact of launch-pad explosion tests. Sonic booms which ripped through southern Hokkaido following simulated solid rocket booster explosions caused havoc as shocked foul died wholesale in their coops in farms surrounding the facility and the noise caused alarm and dropped tea cups up to 10 kilometers away from the test center, resulting in bitter complaints and another massive investigation by the Space Activities Commission.
A 99 page report submitted to the SAC in September subsequently blamed "unusual weather conditions," saying that the shock waves had unexpectedly bounced off low cloud multiplying the power of the sonic booms. The tests were moved to Woomera, central Australia to avoid more grief, causing a NASDA official to joke "our next target is kangaroos."
However the stories that dominated were budget problems and satellite program woes. The first hint of financial trouble came in July when the Space Activities Commission asked NASDA to self-impose 80 billion yen ($683m) cuts in projected spending through slashing between 18 and 31 percent in development costs on four key programs;
In August, NASDA dutifully requested its lowest-ever funding increase of 1.53 percent to 178.5 billion yen ($1.44 Bn) and putting NASDA's ability to maintain its ambitious development program in serious doubt, according to top officials.
"1998 will be much more difficult. We don't yet have a good idea how to settle the budget issue. I can't say anything more than that," said Mitsugi Chiba, Director of the Space Policy Division of the Science and Technology Agency.
One the first causalities The fate of the Hope-X prototype itself seems in the balance. Conceived in an era when Japan's space agencies assumed steady annual increases of 5 percent or more the Hope-X program is little more than the rump of a far more ambitious program which was to have used the Hope-X as a one shot prototype to be followed by a larger scale unmanned shuttle to be called Hope.
This unfortunately named vehicle was the first victim to fall foul of a new era of financial stringency which started last year with the lowest ever space development budget request, leading to summer headlines such as "Hope abandoned." It was initially designed as a high-tech, high profile way to resupply the Japanese Experiment Module aboard the International Space Station. With Hope axed and NASDA switching limited financial resources to the 30 billion yen H2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV), basically a series of no-frills expendable pods that will be mounted atop 3-ton class H2A rockets, with the shuttle prototype little more than a white elephant that will be quietly replaced with a new program next century.
Meanwhile, the fate of the HTV itself hangs in the balance (see below and related story).
Just as NASDA was bracing itself for an imposed "Cheaper, better, faster," era over the summer another disaster already struck on June 30 when telemetry data from the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite vanished from tracking stations between shifts, leading to initial speculation that the $474 million, 3.6 ton bus had been smashed by debris. A three month investigation revealed that the satellite's 26 meter ultra thin solar array blanket had snapped from its base mount having been damaged just after its unfurling the previous August.
The immediate impact was to delay the launch of the Communications and Broadcasting Engineering Test Satellite from August to next February while that satellite's solar arrays were rechecked. Similarly the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite-2 faces delays as its solar arrays are redesigned and strengthened.
In the longer term the accident raised fundamental questions about NASDA's policy of mixing experimental technologies like the new style array with functioning systems like the satellites' sensors, whose loss damaged the international science community, explained Kiyoshi Higuchi, director NASDA's policy department.
"We realized that our technologies are not yet mature, we have to rethink our risk assessment policy," he said.
The Science and Technology Agency, alarmed at the minor but persistent subsystems glitches suffered by ADEOS - which began just after launch and continued almost week in week out, had already published a report back in April recommending more thorough ground checks.
The Agency also faces a critical period over the next six months when the success or failure of the upcoming Communications and Broadcasting Engineering test satellite launch, and ETS-7 now in orbit will either reestablish or severely damage confidence in NASDA and Japan's reputation for reliability.
As this report is published senior officials in the Science and Technology Agency have expressed pessimism after the troubled beginning to ETS-7's mission. Following a near perfect launch by the H2 rocket from Tanegashima, southern Japan on November 29, the satellite battled through two failures - firstly with its solar array pointing devise then with its attitude control system which was automatically switched off by a software error, leaving the satellite spinning uselessly for a week while scientists established the cause of the problem.
Quickly forming an emergency trouble shooting team headed by NASDA vice-president Tomifumi Godai, engineers were able to establish that there were no hardware failures in any of the satellite's attitude control subsystems and were finally able to stabilize the satellite over December 7 and 8.
Mitsushige Oda confided that the satellite had been built very quickly and very cheaply and, with the satellite's main computers having to process over a megabyte of data.
For Japan's second space agency, ISAS, 1997 started well with double success following the February 11 launch of the world's first space-borne very Long Baseline Infererometry observatory, the Highly Advanced Laboratory for Communications and Astronomy. The launch vehicle used the M-5, was also a first outing and again proving ISAS can build first class rockets.
While the black-hole and quasar-hunting observatory fell more and more behind schedule as scientists struggled to calibrate an international network of antennas, the satellite eventually managed to capture the "fringe" signal of a very distant quasar, 1519-273, in the constellation of Libra on May 7.
"It proves it works," said one official at the time. Full operability for the system, which is said to be capable of an equivalent resolution 1000 times greater than the Hubble space telescope, is expected soon.
The M-5 also performed well "bringing ISAS into a new era of ambitious lunar and planetary exploration," according to Yasunori Matogawa, director of the Institute's office of external relations. Plans are also underway to cheapen the launcher's per-flight cost in time for the Muses-C asteroid sample return mission in 2001.
Japan's first moon-probe, Planet-B, suffered integration problems in June when tests revealed problems with the vehicle's separation system for the three lunar regolith-piercing projectiles delaying the mission until next spring. Also the joint-ISAS/NASDA Selene moon lander experiment now faces major redesigns following a severely reduced budget.
However ISAS should receive a rise of up to 4.3 percent which will allow partial funding for a successor to the highly successful Yohkoh X-ray observing satellite, to be called Solar-B.
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