Japan’s Cabinet is asking the nation’s finance ministry for a 19.4 percent increase, to 327 billion yen ($3.05 billion), in space spending for the upcoming fiscal year to support projects that include a laser-optical data-relay satellite and a civilian Earth-observing satellite carrying a missile warning sensor as a hosted payload.
The request, which encompasses the space activity of 11 government ministries, also includes 13.7 billion yen to complete a seven-satellite Quasi Zenith regional navigation system and 13 billion yen for the next-generation H-3 launcher, scheduled for a 2020 debut, according to budget documents released by the Office of National Space Policy (ONSP), a part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet that is responsible for drafting space budgets.
Notably, however, the budget contains no funding for a proposed constellation of satellites for maritime domain awareness, although sources suggested that a number of new and ongoing satellite technology efforts could eventually feed into that program. The finance ministry in December rejected the ONSP’s 8 billion yen request for the Maritime Domain Awareness constellation for fiscal year 2014 on the grounds that it was poorly defined.
For the first time since 2009, the space budget request is being made separately from the defense ministry’s request for missile defense activities. When missile defense funding is included, the total request jumps to 358.4 billion yen, compared with 324.2 billion yen last year, for a total combined increase of 10.5 percent, according to ONSP figures.
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