Hidden support
There has been some good news recently in the form of a successful test flight for the HTV, an unmanned resupply vehicle that brings cargo to the International Space Station.
The flight brought worldwide attention to Japan's technology strengths. Several factors were behind the success, including the high reliability of the reinforced H-IIB rocket, the technology to achieve launch in an extremely narrow time window, and close coordination with the NASA research center and other international institutions.
Also key to the success were the orbital test of rendezvous docking performed in 1998 and the basic research that had been going forward for several years prior to that. I personally spent several years leading a team of veteran engineers that provided independent checks of the work of the HTV development team.
What I want to emphasize is that the successful test flight garnered all the headlines and buzz, but behind it was an incredible amount of decidedly non-flashy basic research and background projects. The work and efforts of an enormous number of people went into the final product.
Yoshiaki Ohkami
Director, SDM Research Institute