Japan Aims To Boost Its ISS Role with Cargo Return Vehicle

摘要

Japan is pressing forward with ambitious plans to enhance its role on the international space station (ISS), announcing its intentions to better utilize the Kibo laboratory and build a variant of the H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV) that would be capable of bringing cargo back to Earth.rnIn an Aug. 11 briefing to Japan's Space Activities Commission, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) officials outlined two enhancement options that would enable the HTV to return cargo from the space station before 2020 and put the automated cargo supply ship on the path to eventually carrying humans, said Seiichi Ueno, director of JAXA's Human Space Systems Directorate's program management and integration department.