Report from Kibo-ABC Workshop at the 25th APRSAF in Singapore

The Kibo-ABC workshop, co-chaired by Mr. Cheng Hai Tan from SSTA and Mr. Fumiaki Tanigaki from JAXA, was held on November 6 at the Sheraton Towers Singapore. It was organized under the Space Environment Utilization Working Group (SEUWG), and the 25th session of the Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum (APRSAF-25). Thirty-five participants from twenty organizations in fourteen countries attended. While Kibo-ABC initiative members are continuing the monthly WEB meeting, this workshop also provides opportunities for face-to-face meetings.

Program [PDF: 274KB]

 

Various ongoing programs of Kibo-ABC member countries were actively discussed at the meeting. One highlight activity was Asian Try Zero-G 2018 (ATZ-G 2018) which was performed onboard ISS/Kibo by astronaut Norishige Kanai in February 2018. In addition to the onboard experiment results, the achievement of improvements from previous ATZ-G programs were reviewed and discussed for example, the first attempt to launch experiment tools dedicated for the ATZ-G experiment to ISS/Kibo so that proposers were able to apply a wider range of experiment ideas. Another example was having various feedback opportunities for proposers such as an explanation of space customized experiment procedures, real-time observation of onboard experiment at the Kibo Mission Control Room in JAXA Tsukuba Space Center, giving a special lecture and having an experiment result meeting with the astronaut Norishige Kanai. It was also reported that the number of applications for the ATZ-G 2018 increased threefold compared to the previous ATZ-G. All Kibo-ABC members acknowledged that such improvements have made the ATZ-G a more attractive program and recognized the importance of further improvements. Participants of the workshop enjoyed the movie of the ATZ-G 2018.

 

Active discussion for Asian Herb in Space (AHiS) and fee-based parabolic flight opportunities were conducted as well.
At the end of the workshop, JAXA introduced a new program of Kibo utilization for Kibo-ABC countries "Robotics Programing Competition" with Int-Ball (Kibo's internal drone) and Astrobee (NASA's 1feet³ robot) to be performed under the Japan US Open Platform Partnership Program (JP-US OP3) from 2020. Details of the robot competition will be discussed at Kibo-ABC meetings.

 

The result of the SEUWG was reported by Co-Chairs at the plenary session of the APRSAF-25 on November 8, 2018.

[PDF: 948KB]