ETS-9: Japan’s Experiment to Become Competitive

ETS-9: Japan’s Experiment to Become Competitive - By Government Subsidy? Or By Government-Industry Partnership?
Japan has been proceeding with ETS (Engineering Test Satellite)-9 project under joint initiatives by multiple government bodies and functions. It is a government sponsored development of a digital HTS satellite architecture targeting that it would bring Japan as a competitive player at the world’s GEO HTS satellite manufacturing market. In addition, the Japanese Government selected JSAT as a partner to put an optical telescope payload on this ETS-9 satellite, and also to be in charge of the satellite’s TT&C operations. This is an interesting and brave experiment by the government agencies to support their local private players to be better positioned at respective commercial market segments. Is this effort meaningful? Will this effort be successful? What would be next steps? The Session will ask key stakeholders of the program to brief about the ETS-9 project and their roles, listen to their motivations, status and future plans. The Session will then discuss where Japan is positioned now, and will be positioned at the global and Asian markets as a result of the ETS-9 project, government’s roles and private companies’ responses in technical developments and commercialization, etc.