NICT's Research and Development Plan in Space Communications Technology

摘要

NICT has been involved in research and development of space communications technology since 1960s and is currently carrying out many kinds of demonstration experiment utilizing ETS VIII and WINDS for which NICT developed a part of mission payload. Space communications' role in keeping social safety is consistently important. Concurrently, information networks become a social infrastructure. Therefore, space communications should provide robustness and flexibility as well as usability to information networks in any situations. This paper introduces a direction of R&D of space communications technology especially for contribution to social safety.