JAXA
Japan's national air and space agency
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is the operator of the Japanese space program and Japan's national aeronautics research agency. It was formed in 2003 through the merger of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan, and the National Space Development Agency of Japan.
JAXA has conducted missions including the SELENE lunar orbiter, the SLIM lunar lander and rovers, and the Hayabusa asteroid missions. Hayabusa returned samples from an asteroid in 2010, while Hayabusa2 deployed rovers on an asteroid surface. Akatsuki studied Venus from orbit between 2015 and 2024. IKAROS tested solar sail propulsion in interplanetary space. BepiColombo, launched jointly with the European Space Agency in 2018, is a mission to Mercury. Martian Moons eXploration is scheduled to launch in December 2026 and is planned to return samples from Phobos.
JAXA operates the H3, a medium-lift launch vehicle, from Tanegashima Space Center and the Epsilon S, a small-lift launch vehicle, from Uchinoura Space Center. JAXA is one of five space agencies participating in the International Space Station (ISS) program.
The public source identifies “JAXA” as japan's national air and space agency. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around JAXA, Japan's and national.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q179103. VIAF identifies the subject as 137676133. The Library of Congress control number is nr2005028216. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003, 2010, 2015 and 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “JAXA” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.