Japanese space agency has plans for reusable shuttle

Japan's agency wants to develop a manned space shuttle over the next two decades that could eventually go to the moon, an official said yesterday.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, would first launch a space pod filled with supplies for the orbiting International Space Station before developing a reusable manned space vessel like the US space shuttle, said an agency official who declined to be identified

JAXA the proposal yesterday to a government space panel, and it wasn't clear if the government would approve the agency's request for a budget increase to ?280 billion (US$2.6 billion).

The agency now has an annual budget of about US$2 billion -- compared with NASA's US$16.2 billion.

The agency's ambitious plans come after Japan sent a communications satellite into space aboard the country's workhorse H-2A rocket in February -- JAXA's first success following a 15-month hiatus for space missions prompted by a string of failures.

JAXA's also calls for robots to conduct probes and build a manned research base on the moon as well as long-range satellites to travel 1.5 million kilometers and search for evidence of the universe's origins and life beyond Earth, the spokesman said.

Other projects include a passenger airliner that will travel at Mach 2 -- or twice the speed of sound -- for five-hour Tokyo-Los Angeles flights and an unmanned, hydrogen-fueled plane that can travel at Mach 5, he added.

Japan's agency has long focused on unmanned scientific probes. In a major policy switch last year, however, a government panel recommended that the country consider its own manned space program.

Long Asia's top space-faring nation, Japan has been playing catch-up to Europe in commercial satellite launches.

Tokyo has struggled to outdo China, which put its first astronaut into orbit in October 2003 and later announced plans for a trip to the moon.

One after China's space shot, a Japanese H-2A rocket carrying two spy satellites malfunctioned after liftoff, forcing controllers to end the mission in a fireball. Further launches were put on hold for 15 months.