Japanese Lunar Exploration Program
Japan has a special program for exploring the Moon. This program is run by Japan's space agency, JAXA, and its space science institute, ISAS. The aim is to learn more about where the Moon comes from and how it has changed. In the future, they also want to use the Moon. The first Moon mission was called SELENE and it started in 2007. This mission sent a spacecraft to orbit the Moon. There were plans for another mission called SELENE-2 with a lander and a rover, but it was cancelled in 2015. Japan wants to keep working with other countries to learn more about the Moon and maybe one day send Japanese people to stay there and do science.
In the past, Japan sent its first satellite, Hiten, to the Moon in 1990 just to try out some technology. SELENE, which is also called Kaguya, was a big mission with three different spacecrafts. It was named after a Moon princess from a Japanese story. SLIM is another mission that Japan is working on. It is made to land on the Moon and learn more about it.
There is an idea to get solar power from space to use on Earth. It's about making energy from the Sun using big satellites in space, and then sending it to Earth without using wires. In space, these satellites can get more sunlight because there's no air like we have on Earth to block it. They can also see the Sun almost all the time. This energy would be changed into a different kind of energy that can move through the air to special places on the ground where it would be used.
People have been thinking about this since the 1970s. But it's still too expensive to send all the things we need into space. Some people are thinking about ways to make it cheaper, like building things in space or using different ways to get to space without rockets.
But there are also some hard things to figure out. Like how to send the energy without wires. Today, we can't make wires that go all the way to space, so the energy would have to be sent in a special way that isn't perfect and can lose some energy. Also, the places on the ground that pick up the energy need to be very big, and that means using a lot of land.
Another thing to think about is how long the satellites can last in space, where they could be hurt by things like space rocks and space weather. But even with these problems, the idea is to make the energy safe so it wouldn't hurt people if the satellite's energy beam didn't go to the right place.
In short, getting solar power from space is an interesting idea that could give us lots of energy, but there are still many problems that need to be solved before we can do it.
Axiom Space is a company in Houston, Texas, in America. It was made in 2016 by two people, Michael T. Suffredini and Kam Ghaffarian. In 2022, they sent people to space for the first time. They went to a place called the International Space Station. Axiom Space wants to make a new space station that anyone can use to do different things like science and making things in space.
The people who work at Axiom Space used to work at NASA, which is America's space group. They sent the Axiom Mission 1 to the space station with a rocket from another company called SpaceX. This happened in April 2022.
Michael T. Suffredini, who helps run Axiom Space, worked at NASA before for 10 years. Kam Ghaffarian, who also helps run Axiom, is a smart person who made another company that works with NASA. Now, Axiom Space is working with NASA to add parts to the space station so that more people can go to space in the future.