Summer Reading: In Defense of Japan

Last year, a must read book surfaced for those of us who track the complex world of the Japanese space sector. "In Defense of Japan: From the Market to the Military in Space Policy," by Saadia Pekkanen and Paul Kallendar-Umezu (published by Stanford University Press, ISBN 080470063X) may not be the definitive work on this subject, but this writer is hard pressed indeed to identify any recent book in English that comes close to covering as much ground as this one does. The bottom line is that anyone who looks closely at what Japan is doing in space might want to look again - this time from the perspective of China and Korea. Where Japan appears to pursue peaceful space experiments, for example, the seeds for prototype space bombers akin to those under development for the U.S. "Prompt Global Strike" program may be lurking. Sure, skeptics might counter, the realm of space is awash in dual-purpose platforms, and anyone can extract a military purpose or profile from what is probably a conventional scientific and research mission. This book takes such skepticism in stride and leaves it up to the readers to decide if the defense-oriented pattern that permeates the Japanese space sector is merely a coincidence or a Ministry of Defense endorsed campaign. This book challenges the reader by addressing the subject as it pertains both to the broader subject of Japanese remilitarization - enabled by political and cultural shifts - as well as the possible emergence of a nuclear-weaponized Japan. The book requires a basic understanding of the Japanese institutional, historical, and legal forces at work. And because so much emphasis is placed on the role of a few elite Japanese corporations as the key catalysts in the evolving process, it also helps to understand their role as defense contractors in areas other than space. Add it all up, and you are presented with rather compelling evidence. Whether or not you accept the premise that Japan is a military space power today, this book reminds you constantly that regardless of which party is in power - DPJ or LDP - Japan's militarization of space assets is likely to remain on auto-pilot for decades to come. The book does offer an abundance of charts which are extremely valuable unto themselves. More than 80 pages of notes provide the reader with ample documentation. At the same time, the reader is left to wonder where exactly in the Ministry of Defense are the points of intersection when it comes to the layering of the subgroups which are assigned to these various space projects by the big corporations - both U.S. and Japanese - that receive so much attention in this 377-page volume. Also, the authors state that, "the push toward smaller satellites remains a work in progress" before proceeding to discuss all the small satellite projects now underway in Japanese universities, for example. Years ago, in one of my earliest articles on the Japanese space program, "A Sleeper in the Space Race" (Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, July 1987), the launch of Japan's small Marine Observation Satellite -1 (MOS-1) was mentioned as an example of Japanese space engineering prowess. So, what is a work in progress apparently spans decades. Of course, I also predicted in 1987 that the steady progress of the Japanese launch sector would certainly deprive the Soviets of opportunities to launch payloads from the West. I was certainly proven wrong over time. And yet, the authors rightfully assert that the inability of the Japanese to capitalize on the commercial launch and payload business contributed enormously to the steady shift by Japanese space sector companies to a shared defense-oriented business plan. The recent sale of Japanese-built satellites to Turksat remain the exception and not the rule. Hopefully, Japan can sell some more satellites soon. So, there is plenty of time left this summer for you to add this book to your must read list. And for those who need a little Japanese space trivia to spur you along, here it is. Who was the first Japanese to fly in space? Toyohiro Akiyama, a reporter for TBS who went up on the Russian Soyuz in 1990. Here we are more than 20 years later, and soon everyone going up will have to carry a ticket issued by the Russians.

Bar Harbor Bike Shop Mobilizes for 3/11 Victims

This is a somber solar note. Tourists from all over the world come to Acadia National Park here on Mount Desert Island, Maine where they often climb Cadillac Mountain to watch the beautiful sunrise. Cadillac Mt. summit is billed as the first place in the continental U.S. to receive the sun's rays during the dawn of each new day. Because many Japanese have made the early morning trek up Cadillac, readers might be interested to learn that my good friends at the Bar Harbor Bike Shop have created a novel fund-raising campaign which captures the spirit of Cadillac in support of the victims of the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami.

The sad fate of  Rikuzentakata and its many lost and missing residents in particular prompted this fundraiser.

The Bar Harbor Bike Shop has a raffle underway, and custom-designed "Climb Cadillac" T-shirts for $35 can be purchased by anyone who has reached the top of Cadillac on foot or on a bike, but not by car. The time of the ascent is not important. Proceeds from these T shirts and $5 raffle tickets will be donated to the relief efforts overseen by the Japan Society in New York City. Many prizes including a $1000 bike are part of this raffle. The T-shirt purchase includes 3 tickets.

Contact information is available at -

http://www.barharborbike.com/

Japanese team readies rover for lunar competition

In early June, a group of 20 people got together in Tokyo for a combined social gathering and lunar-related brainstorming session. This was hosted by White Label Space Japan LLC (WLS-J), part of a multinational team that is aspiring to win the grand prize which will be awarded to the first Google Lunar X-Prize (GLXP) team that lands a rover on the moon which can successfully complete a 500-meter trek across the lunar surface while transmitting high definition video and data back to Earth. There are 29 teams from all across the world competing. WLS-J is primarily responsible for building a broader base of support and promoting the activities of one of those teams, Netherlands-based White Label Space (WLS). If everything goes according to plan, a prototype of a Japanese-built WLS lunar rover will be ready for public viewing by the end of this summer. That work is taking place for WLS at Tohoku University in the Department of Aerospace Engineering's Space Robotics Laboratory under the leadership of Professor Kazuya Yoshida. While the Laboratory is well known for its important space-related projects, a very sophisticated mobile robot known as Quince is also being built there. Quince will be used in the Fukushima nuclear reactor plant. Professor Tadokoro is in charge of this rapid development project. As Founder and CEO of WLS-J, Takeshi Hakamada is attempting to reach out to as many people as possible with a broad range of backgrounds. "First of all, we think promotion is the most important thing to do to raise funding so that we think the 'fun meeting' is one of our promotion tools to educate and motivate people to get involved in WLS activities," said Hakamada. "It was successful. Around 20 people came and discussed how to promote GLXP and WLS in Japan with WLS-J team members. We plan to hold this type of event every month." Hakamada described the attendees as a mix of young Japanese professionals who are interested in space development and have their own professional careers, such as management consultants, PR agents, scientists, and engineers. "We are discussing the business plan and how to manage team activities. We are almost finished with the planning phase and ready to move on to the implementation phase." Said Hakamada. "Besides various companies and individuals who are interested in WLS and who have started to discuss future collaboration, the number of volunteers who want to help us with WLS-related activities is increasing every week. How to use them is now one of our happy, but serious issues." Steven Allen, WLS's Team Leader, describes WLS as "a global adventure of massive proportions." Among other things, it appears to be the largest European-Asian partnership engaged in the GLXP competition. "The team continues to grow in size, but the level of effort that people (can offer WLS) varies due to the fact that the work is unpaid and everyone needs also to make a living," said Allen. WLS is attracting many talented individuals because they are frustrated with government space programs (or the lack thereof), and these people like having the freedom that they cannot find elsewhere in the space sector as well. "This ability to work on what they love creatively and collaboratively without being bound by archaic space industry work practices (is very important to them). The space industry in Europe especially seems to have been built to kill off any form of enthusiasm and is built to maintain the current status quo," said Allen. "The result is a lack of genuine space technology innovation, high cost, red tape and engineers that wonder why they bothered to investing a large amount of their time and energy to join the industry." Allen very much appreciates what Hakamada is trying to do at WLS-J with his "fun meeting" concept. "In order for us to raise the funds we need, we need to get more PR people on board ASAP. Anyone out there with the marketing skills that we need, and is willing to put in the hours to get us where we need to be, please feel free to contact us," said Allen. Check out the WLS and WLS-J web sites at - http://www.mail2web.com/cgi-bin/redir.asp?lid=0&newsite=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ewhitelabelspace%2Ecom%2F http://www.mail2web.com/cgi-bin/redir.asp?lid=0&newsite=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egooglelunarxprize%2Eorg%2Flunar%2Fteams%2Fwhite%2Dlabel%2Dspace%2F http://www.mail2web.com/cgi-bin/redir.asp?lid=0&newsite=http%3A%2F%2Fwhitelabelspacejapanoffice%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F (Japanese) Allen also describes the progress on the rover by Professor Yoshida's team as "astounding" especially when you consider that devastating effects of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami on the region surrounding Tohoku University. Besides the vital support from the group at Tohoku University and WLS-J, WLS has relied on "Lunar Numbat" which are WLS's partners from Australia and New Zealand. "They have also done some incredible work for us, and are in fact critical to our overall mission success," said Allen. "The biggest challenge for our team right now is finance. We are a technology heavy team, and one of the few that has members that have real life experience with actual space missions. So, we do need some people onboard right now that can help us out with both finance and PR." India - home to many enthusiasts and experts who are members of various GLXP teams - may play an important role here in terms of getting WLS to the Moon. "We still intend to use an Indian PSLV-XL launch vehicle, which has both a good track record and is cost effective in comparison to some of the other options we have considered," said Allen, who monitors other Asian teams, but does not see them "doing anything particularly outstanding" thus far. "There are some teams in Europe doing interesting things both technically and on the marketing side, but there is no sign of any major funding for them. Personally, I like the work that Frednet and ARCA have been doing, and of course, the joyous craziness that Synergy Moon brings to the competition," said Allen. Allen finds it unfortunate that neither ESA nor JAXA,"has stepped up to the plate to offer financial support to teams from Europe and Japan." So, mark your calendars for the final week in August. That is when the curtain will go up on the 4-wheel rover prototype that the team at the Space Robotics Laboratory has been designing and fabricating for concept verification and ground-based field testing. "Today, we are working on the onboard electronics for wheel motor control and omni-cam image processing for mapping and navigation. Now, we are planning a big party for the prototype roll-out in Tokyo where we will demonstrate basic mobility and panorama viewing capability using an onboard omni-directional camera," said Professor Yoshida. The biggest challenge facing the team has been wheel and chassis design. What is emerging is a rover which is 300 x 400 x 500 mm in size, 10 kg in mass, and equipped with 4 wheels which are 200 mm in diameter. "We know that larger dimensions in wheel diameter, wheelbase, and track are certainly advantageous for the locomotion in loose soil environment, such as Moon surface covered with lunar regolith. We therefore designed a deployable chassis," said Professor Yoshida. "The chassis has a passive suspension mechanism that ensures a stable contact of wheels on rough and bumpy surface. The proportion of the wheel diameter of our rover is the biggest when compared to the rovers of other teams, and this will make a big difference in overall mobility on the Moon." Thermal design is certainly important, and a very challenging aspect for such a tiny rover with 10kg in mass, too. "We need to keep the temperature of the driving motors and onboard electronics in an appropriate range against intense sunlight and its reflection from the shiny surface," said Professor Yoshida. "This will be a future challenge when we design the Engineering Model (EM) as a next step." Besides WLS-J, Prof. Yoshida can detect no other GLXP teams with headquarters or partners in Japan. "To the best of our knowledge, there are no individuals in Japan supporting other teams. Yes, we are surprised by this since Japan has a lot to offer the GLXP," said Prof. Yoshida. "Our technology is known all over the world, and we already have strong space programs including lunar missions. Also, we have many large global companies that would be ideal sponsors." While Allen is unhappy about the lack of support from ESA and JAXA, NASA is a different story entirely. "We are particularly watching the American teams that have received seed capital from a special NASA program. Each of those teams are developing a special key technology needed for lunar landing. The support they are getting from NASA is very useful to fund the early phases of their mission developments, but it is not enough to close their business cases. They will eventually need one or more big sponsorship deals," said Prof. Yoshida. He is referring to NASA's Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data (ILDD) program which Allen describes as "a critical source of funding for GLXP teams with members based in the USA, while at the same time giving them a governmental rubber stamp of approval for the technology they are developing."  "In these times of economic uncertainty, European and Asian space agencies should really be trying to foster a startup culture that will bring competition and much needed innovation to the space industry market place (instead of state monopoly) and bring down the cost to taxpayers who are the people that actually have to foot the bill," said Allen, who estimates that the first GLXP rover will actually land on the MOON in 2014 at the earliest, but I would love to be surprised." (I often edit / rewrite  text and press releases written in English by other GLXP teams based outside the U.S. The Russian team known as Team Selenokhod, and the Shanghai-based Team Selene ask frequently for my assistance which I provide free of charge. I have also assisted newer teams from Brazil, and Chile, but they seldom knock on my door lately. Team Selenokhod ranks at the top of my list in terms of actual work performed to date.)

Looking closer at Japanese satellite networks during disaster response

Earlier this week, I wrote about a report issued by the Government of
Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters (NERHQ). I mentioned that
it raised questions about the overall performance, reliability and
robustness of Japan's satellite networks including the "Local
Authorities Satellite Communications Network" or LASCOM.

Kazuto Suzuki, Professor of International Political Economy at Hokkaido
University Public Policy School, was kind enough to share some
information that he recently received from an executive at LASCOM which
is overseen by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and
Communications.

The majority of LASCOM ground stations in the Tohoku area were OK, he
reports. Only 47 stations or 10 percent of the 473 ground stations in
Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima and Ibaraki prefectures were out of service
immediately after the earthquake. LASCOM was used successfully to
transmit video and voice traffic from municipal governments in the
worst earthquake hit areas to prefectural governments.

One or two days after the earthquake, the number of inoperable stations
more than doubled to a total of 107 stations due to power outages. Many
stations that switched over to backup batteries found themselves out of
service in a day.

Given the scale of the earthquake damage, it appears that the LASCOM
network held up quite well. Many municipal governments lost their
ability to function because municipal offices and the attached
communications infrastructure were destroyed. Several key municipal
officers who were designated to be in charge in the case of a disaster
also sadly perished.

This loss of senior local incident managers was indeed tragic, but this
should not have impacted the day to day operation of emergency
communications including the satellite networking component. What about
the other personnel who should have been present in a support and / or
operational capacity? Did these network operators perish, too? Or did
far too few of these support personnel exist in the first place?

Thus, when this new LASCOM-related information is compared and
contrasted to the findings of the NERHQ report, new questions
arise. Besides the lack of adequate training which is a theme which one
encounters in every post-disaster analysis, the NERHQ report points to
major communications problems, and does not support a scenario where
only 10 percent of the affected sites were suddenly knocked out.

At the same time, as more light is shed on the response of certain
companies and government agencies, the role of NTT Docomo with its
Widestar and Widestar II services is getting very high marks, whereas
JAXA's reluctance or inability to quickly provide anything more than
very limited satellite communications to evacue via its satellite
assets has been called into question.

NTT Docomo which owns the N-Star satellites and provides satellite
phone and data services - fixed and mobile - throughout Japan deployed
a large number of ground receive units in the Tohoku area soon after
the earthquake hit. It achieved a goal of providing free phone service
to all evacuees in 150 evacuation camps and this proved to be a
significant contribution for relatives and friends of evacuees. In
fact, this was the only viable way for many people to confirm that
their friends and relatives were safe after the catastrophe. By the
way, the actual number of ground receive units deployed by NTT Docomo
may be even higher as this count surfaced soon after the evacuation was
underway.

On the other hand, JAXA's two powerful communications satellites, WINDS
and ETS-8, appeared to be marginal players at best during the
widespread recovery efforts. While JAXA officials may correctly assert
that JAXA focuses only on R&D and has never served as a disaster relief
agency, I have been told that JAXA often appeared too rigid and slow to
react. Rather than devoting considerable energy to solving the problem
of getting phone systems in place for so many people cut off from
friends and family members, JAXA focused on connecting just a handful
of local government offices, and unlike NTT Docomo did not generate a
timely, relevant and larger scale action plan.

In effect, JAXA dropped the ball here - remaining in the background -
at a time when a large number of flexible and rapidly installed
satellite-based solutions were urgently needed. This happened despite
the fact that when JAXA launched WINDS in 2008 with a price tag of
approximately $USD 500 million, much was said by JAXA about how WINDS
would demonstrate cutting edge disaster response techniques, among
other things. Perhaps it might be more prudent to say that an
opportunity for JAXA to conduct a convincing full-scale demonstration
of the prowess and potential impact of these two satellites in real
world emergencies was lost.  

Japanese satellites performed perfectly, but once the ground stopped shaking...

The Government of Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters has
released its findings entitled, "Report of Japanese Government to the
IAEA Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety - The Accident at TEPCO's
Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations" dated June 2011

(See - http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/kan/topics/201106/
iaea_houkokusho_e.html_

While the report is geared for a specific technical audience, it has
revealed that the Japanese government may have stumbled into a
satellite black hole. This admission that the Japanese government and
disaster response personnel in particular soon found themselves
overwhelmed and cut off - a situation that applied to upper level
incident managers in Tokyo as well as personnel in the field -
represents an important step as the Japanese government assesses the
strengths and weaknesses of its emergency communications grid.

The report states -

"Additionally, the NERHQs (Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters)
directly called those municipalities. However, since communication
services including telephone lines were heavily damaged by the
massive earthquake, not all the direct calls reached the affected
municipalities. Prior notification to local governments was not
satisfactorily delivered because some municipalities did not
receive evacuation instruction either directly or indirectly." (p.
IX-7)

And later in a chapter which focused on the lessons learned, the report
also states that -

"Effective training to respond to accident restoration at nuclear power
plants and adequately work and communicate with relevant organizations
in the wake of severe accidents was not sufficiently implemented up
to now. For example, it took time to establish communication
between the emergency office inside the power station, the Nuclear
Emergency Response Headquarters and the Local Headquarters and also to
build a collaborative structure with the Self Defense Forces, the
Police, Fire Authorities and other organizations which played important
roles in responding to the accident. Adequate training could have
prevented these problems." (pp. XII 7-8)

By pointing to a much larger communications gap then was previously
disclosed - due to an infrastructure meltdown layered on top of a
possible lack of interoperability - the report does not mask nor
sidestep the issue of the inability of Japanese officials to
communicate quickly and effectively. In doing so, it raises questions
about the overall performance, reliability and robustness of Japan's
"Local Authorities Satellite Communications Network" as well as the
dedicated satellite networks known as "J-ALERT" and "SafetyBird."
SafetyBird in particular includes a dedicated nuclear power plant early
warning component, for example.

Did the severity of the earthquake simply knock out satellite dishes in
multiple locations by shaking them and therefore terminating the
connection between ground equipment and their respective satellites? Or
did power supply disruptions knock out satellite transmit and receive
devices?

No explicit language in the report points a finger at the satellite
ground segment, but the suggestion is too strong to ignore, and the
results are too obvious to overlook.

This report to the IAEA leaves many unanswered questions about the
status of satellite communications in this instance. By the way, this
writer examined this topic several weeks ago in a post which appeared
on "Japan Security Watch" which was entitled, "Japan's Earthquake
Revealed Key Satellite Gaps"

See-
http://newpacificinstitute.org/jsw/?p=5716

A more objective and more detailed analysis of what went wrong and why
so many key personnel were affected in the process needs to emerge.

In many respects, the lessons learned by Japanese disaster response
planners parallel those that the U.S. learned in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina which devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005.

The bottom line is that satellite phones and fixed, two-way satellite dishes, along with the right number of trained and qualified personnel on scene - whether at a facility or a population center - need to be in place and ready to respond.
Operating both the satellite phones in question, and taking charge of
larger satellite uplinks to support phone banks as well as multiple
video feeds etc requires skill and plenty of practice. Absent these key
ingredients, the result can be an unpleasant, unwanted and prolonged
silence.

Launch date

In 2008, Mr. Doi, a Japanese astronaut aboard the International Space Station, took out a paper boomerang and threw it only to have it return to him. Many doubted that boomerangs would perform in this fashion in outer space. A Japanese astronaut proved them wrong.

So begins this blog. This will be an attempt to better explain what the Japanese are doing in space and why. The author does not speak Japanese, so only information in English will appear here.

There is a lot happening in Japan in terms of space-related activity in general. Japan needs help in getting the word out. Over the coming weeks, my plan is to shed more light on the Japanese space sector, and to reach out to younger researchers as well in order to demonstrate the full range and scope of what is underway.

Everything has to begin somewhere.