Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in the context of "Tsukuba Space Center"

The US Orbital Segment (USOS) is the name given to the components of the International Space Station (ISS) constructed and operated by the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), European Space Agency (ESA), Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The segment consists of eleven pressurized components and various external elements, almost all of which were delivered by the Space Shuttle.

The segment is monitored and controlled from various mission control centers around the world including Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, Columbus Control Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany and Tsukuba Space Center in Tsukuba, Japan. However, it depends on the Russian Orbital Segment for essential flight control, orbital station-keeping and life support systems.

The Lunar Gateway, or simply Gateway, is a planned space station which is to be assembled in orbit around the Moon. The Gateway is intended to serve as a communication hub, science laboratory, and habitation module for astronauts as part of the Artemis program. It is a multinational collaborative project: participants include NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC). The Gateway is planned to be the first space station beyond low Earth orbit.

The science disciplines to be studied on the Gateway are expected to include planetary science, astrophysics, Earth observation, heliophysics, fundamental space biology, and human health and performance. As of April 2024, construction is underway of the initial habitation and propulsion modules. The International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG), which is composed of 14 space agencies including NASA, has concluded that Gateway systems will be critical in expanding human presence to the Moon, to Mars, and deeper into the Solar System.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was a NASA space mission aimed at testing a method of planetary defense against near-Earth objects (NEOs). It was designed to assess how much a spacecraft impact deflects an asteroid through its transfer of momentum when hitting the asteroid head-on. The target asteroid, Dimorphos, is a minor-planet moon of the asteroid Didymos; neither asteroid poses an impact threat to Earth, but their joint characteristics made them an ideal benchmarking target. Launched on 24 November 2021, the DART spacecraft successfully collided with Dimorphos on 26 September 2022 at 23:14 UTC about 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles; 0.074 astronomical units; 29 lunar distances) from Earth. The collision shortened Dimorphos's orbit by 32 minutes, greatly in excess of the pre-defined success threshold of 73 seconds. DART's success in deflecting Dimorphos was due to the momentum transfer associated with the recoil of the ejected debris, which was substantially larger than that caused by the impact itself.

DART was a joint project between NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The project was funded through NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, managed by NASA's Planetary Missions Program Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and several NASA laboratories and offices provided technical support. The Italian Space Agency contributed LICIACube, a CubeSat which photographed the impact event, and other international partners, such as the European Space Agency (ESA), and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), are contributing to related or subsequent projects.

The Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) was a space telescope for infrared light designed and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), in cooperation with ISAS (now part of JAXA) and NASA. The ISO was designed to study infrared light at wavelengths of 2.5 to 240 micrometres and operated from 1995 to 1998.

The €480.1-million satellite was launched on 17 November 1995 from the ELA-2 launch pad at the Guiana Space Centre near Kourou in French Guiana. The launch vehicle, an Ariane 44P rocket, placed ISO successfully into a highly elliptical geocentric orbit, completing one revolution around the Earth every 24 hours. The primary mirror of its Ritchey-Chrétien telescope measured 60 cm in diameter and was cooled to 1.7 kelvins by means of superfluid helium. The ISO satellite contained four instruments that allowed for imaging and photometry from 2.5 to 240 micrometres and spectroscopy from 2.5 to 196.8 micrometers.