TOKYO – Japanese venture companies EX-Fusion and Astroscale have entered in new space debris removal projects that will demonstrate the dual-use capabilities of their technologies and signal civilian-military fusion in the context of allied defense has arrived at Japan’s space program.
Japanese laser energy specialist EX-Fusion and Australia’s EOS Space Systems signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on October 8 to explore cooperation on space debris issues.
The collaborative goal, as reported by the Japanese media, is to develop technology capable of tracking space debris as small as three centimeters, which if accomplished would set a new precision standard for the identification of objects orbiting the Earth.
Headquartered in Canberra, EOS Space Systems is a prominent supplier of optical surveillance capabilities for space domain awareness.
Specializing in high-energy lasers for space object identification, characterization and tracking, remote maneuver and communications, the company is a division of Australian defense contractor Electro Optic Systems (EOS), which makes high-energy laser weapons.
EX-Fusion, headquartered in Osaka, aims to build the world’s first laser-based nuclear fusion reactor. It is also adapting its high-power laser technology to other applications, including communications and space debris tracking and removal.
It has been collaborating with the Institute of Laser Engineering at the University of Adelaide on a high-intensity laser project since last year. On October 10, it announced the establishment of a new subsidiary to facilitate its work with Australian companies.
New equipment combining technology and components from EX-Fusion and EOS Space Systems will be installed in an EOS satellite laser ranging and tracking station in Australia. It is expected to significantly improve the ability to locate debris in space before it potentially collides with and damages satellites.
EX-Fusion and EOS are not alone in the market: Arcsec, a spinoff from Belgian university KU Leuven, competes in the space. Arcsec, which supplies high-accuracy attitude determination and control systems for small and miniature satellites, is also working on technology capable of tracking space debris as small as three centimeters.
While the debris can be small, the problem is large and growing. According to figures from the Space Debris Office of the European Space Agency, about 34,890 objects are regularly tracked, most of them larger than 10 centimeters across.
Estimates of smaller space debris are much higher with about one million fragments from one to 10 centimeters in size and perhaps more than 130 million measured at less than one centimeter.
While space debris removal technology is compatible with and may contribute to identification and response to military threats in space, its development is not simply a cover story for clandestine military activity.
Yuri Borisov, director-general of Russian space agency Roscosmos, recently told reporters about the dangers of artificial debris in low-Earth orbit to the International Space Station, which he explained requires constant monitoring and elimination.
The problem, he said, “needs to be taken very seriously, comprehensively addressing issues of protection from garbage, as well as timely monitoring and evading it.”
Meanwhile, Astroscale, Japan’s space debris removal company, announced on October 4 that it has shipped its debris inspection demonstration spacecraft, Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan (ADRAS-J), from its satellite manufacturing facility in Japan to Rocket
Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand. Rocket Lab is a space launch services provider headquartered in Long Beach, California.
Astroscale President Eddie Kato said, “We have officially moved from the development phase to the launch and operations preparations phase, and we are very much looking forward to the launch of the world’s first debris inspection mission.”
The ADRAS-J spacecraft was selected by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for the first phase of its demonstration program on the commercial removal of space debris. Astroscale is responsible for the design, manufacture, test, launch and operation of ADRAS-J.
The specific task of the ADRAS-J mission is to rendezvous with an old Japanese upper-stage rocket body drifting in space, maneuver around it in close proximity and collect images to assess its movement (spin, spin axis and so on) and structural condition.
Its purpose is to demonstrate inspection and situational awareness capabilities that will make space debris removal a practical option for governments and commercial businesses.
The spacecraft is equipped with eight diagonal thrusters for position control, four straight thrusters for high-thrust maneuvers, navigation sensors, visible light and infrared cameras and laser range finders. It also has an onboard data processor that works in tandem with ground control.
The launch of ADRAS-J was originally scheduled to take place in early November, but may be delayed as Rocket Lab investigates the failure of one of its rockets last month.
Its focus on space debris notwithstanding, Astroscale’s technology is dual use and its management has close ties with the space and defense establishments of Japan, the US and the UK. Astroscale has subsidiaries in the US, UK, France and Israel.
EX-Fusion, too, is moving into the realm of dual-use through its work with EOS, which also makes anti-drone, vehicle firepower and defense, and unmanned ground vehicle and marine lethality systems.
EX-Fusion is closely connected with some of Japan’s most advanced technical institutions. The company was founded in 2021 by Shinsuke Fujioka from Osaka University’s Institute of Laser Engineering; Kazuki Matsuo, an Osaka University specialist in laser fusion and high energy density plasma; and Yoshitaka Mori, associate professor at the Graduate School for the Creation of New Photonics Industries in the city of Hamamatsu.
Via the graduate school, EX-Fusion introduced laser technology from Hamamatsu Photonics, an optical and electronic device company that makes the world’s most powerful semiconductor lasers.
Japanese defense expert Paul Kallender, senior researcher with the Keio Research Institute at Keio University’s Shonan Fujisawa Campus west of Tokyo, believes that what EX-Fusion, EOS and Astroscale are now doing “will be a significant boost to Japan’s space domain
awareness,” which he describes as “Japan’s new, privatized national security hybrid space architecture supporting allied orbital battlespace awareness for both defensive and offensive counterspace operations.”
As used by the Space Systems Command of the US Space Force, space domain awareness means being able to “rapidly detect, warn, characterize, attribute, and predict threats to national, allied, and commercial space systems” using “high-capacity ground radars, detailed optical systems, and space-based assets.”
In an email to Asia Times, Kallender provided this assessment:
“The ability to track debris and other objects, particularly other satellites, has become an urgent concern for the US and its allies as Russia and China continue to develop a steadily widening range of anti-satellite capabilities that could threaten their space systems in the event of a conflict. Tracking can be performed by radars and telescopes on the ground, but is being increasingly pursued by new technologies, including using sensors on satellites, and using lasers.
Japan has been steadily increasing its dual-use and direct military-use tracking capabilities for over a decade. For example, for the ground layer, in addition to a specialized truck-based laser ranging system being developed for the Japanese Ministry of Defense, JAXA and the Ministry of Defense have been vastly improving civilian and military radars for the Combined Space Operations Center, the US military’s global processing center for military tracking data.
For the space layer, the US military is placing tracking sensors on Japan’s QZSS satellites, Japan’s version of GPS, which can triple their utility for centimeter-accurate navigation, precision-guided weapons targeting and now orbital tracking services. Japan’s Ministry of Defense will also be launching at least one further tracking ‘snooper’ satellite of its own.
The addition of centimeter-level tracking capability by Japan will be a major global service not only for space safety but also for Japan’s military space capabilities, helping plot not only space junk and debris, but new classes of very small nano- and pico-satellites that are being developed as space weapons.
Centimeter class tracking is at the cutting edge and of major concern to all orbital users, but especially the military, as, for example, can be seen by the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity’s recently announced Space Debris Identification and Tracking program.
With EX-Fusion and EOS, the combination of academic and commercial partners to pursue dual-use and paramilitary space technologies to build what are called hybrid space architectures, combining commercial and civilian technologies for military use reinforces a pronounced feature of Japan’s space program in recent years, echoing a similar sea-change in the United States.
Of course, Elon Musk’s Starlink constellation [a group of satellites working together], which has been of such service during the Ukraine war, is the most famous example of civilian-military fusion, where ostensibly commercial services are built with the ability to, or are in fact designed to, provide military or national security applications, even critical military capability.
More and more Japanese commercial companies are gearing up to provide paramilitary or military services for Japan’s national security hybrid space architecture, particularly for constellations of dual-use surveillance satellites such as iQPS or Synspective or, for example, with Space Compass.
The EX-Fusion and EOS development though has a different impact in that, just as intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (eyes and ears) are critically important to the terrestrial battlespace, tracking is now a sine qua non of both commercial orbital safety and orbital military operations.
It is particularly relevant coming just weeks after Astroscale, Japan’s premier orbital anti-satellite technology developer, signed a deal to work on dual-use technologies with the US Space Force’s development, acquisition, launch and logistics field command. This keeps Japan at the very forefront of developing real abilities to fight effectively in orbit.”
On September 19, the US Space Systems Command’s Assured Access to Space Directorate, in collaboration with the Space Development Corps’ Space Enterprise Consortium, awarded a US$25.5 million contract to Astroscale US Inc to advance its space mobility and logistics capabilities.
Under the terms of the agreement, Astroscale will deliver a servicing vehicle prototype that will provide in-space refueling for compatible satellites by 2026. This will permit them to remain on-station and on-mission, increasing their operational capability and flexibility.
According to the Space Systems Command, “By itself, this innovation will transform the existing paradigm for space operations.”
It is a dual-use strategy that incorporates the expertise of US allies and which, in this case, advances both the commercial interests and national security of Japan.
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