Kibo is equipped with its own robotic arm and a scientific airlock, both of which allow astronauts to exchange experiment payloads or hardware from the Pressurized Module.

JAXA made its first cargo delivery to the ISS in 2009, when an H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) delivered about 7,400 pounds of equipment and supplies. HTVs are automated cargo craft for resupplying Kibo and the ISS and are expendable: After unloading, they’re loaded with items/hardware no longer needed onboard, unberthed, deorbited, and sent back to Earth, where they incinerate on atmospheric reentry. As of September 2018, seven HTVs have been launched aboard Mitsubishi-built H-IIB rockets from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.

It was an HTV that delivered Japan’s first robot astronaut, Kirobo, to the ISS in August 2013 as a technology demonstration experiment. Kirobo, equipped with software enabling facial recognition, voice and speech recognition, language processing, and speech synthesis, was designed to evaluate how well humans and robots can interact in space, with an eye toward a greater robotic role in future space missions.

JAXA made its first cargo delivery to the ISS in 2009, when an H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) delivered about 7,400 pounds of equipment and supplies.

In June 2017, a Dragon spacecraft brought a new Japanese-made experimental device to the Kibo module: the JEM Ball Camera, or Int-Ball. An experimental ball camera, the 2-pound Int-Ball floats freely in ISS’s microgravity environment and is capable of using 12 small electric propellers to maneuver autonomously throughout the station. The Int-Ball’s cute-robot appearance has made it an item of public fascination, but its ability to transmit images and video in real time is already improving the efficiency of the ISS crew; JAXA has said its astronauts spend 10 percent of their working time photographing their findings, and typically there is a considerable delay between the time an image is captured and sent to Earth.

JAXA has administrative headquarters in Tokyo and other field centers throughout the country, but its primary operational centers are Tanegashima and the Tsukuba Space Center, north of Tokyo, where Kibo was developed and tested, where the Kibo Control Center is located, and where data and images – from the Int-Ball and other sources – are transmitted.

 

The European Space Agency (ESA)

Europe’s history of international collaboration in space dates to 1973, when an ESA predecessor, the European Space Research Organization, signed a memorandum of understanding with NASA to build a science laboratory for use on Space Shuttle flights. The habitable Spacelab modules and their components were flown on 22 Space Shuttle missions in the 1980s and 1990s.

The first astronaut from an ESA member nation to fly in space was Ulf Merbold of Germany, who flew on the Spacelab-1 mission aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in November and December 1983. Merbold was actually the second German in space; Sigmund Jahn, of the former Soviet-bloc East Germany, rode a Soyuz capsule to the Russian Salyut 6 space station in 1978.

The first European to board the ISS was Umberto Guidoni, a payload specialist aboard the shuttle Columbia who came aboard the station in 2001. Thomas Reiter became the first ESA astronaut to serve on an ISS crew in 2006, as part of Expeditions 13 and 14; and Frank De Winne, commander of Expedition 21, became the first European to command the ISS in 2009.

Europe’s largest contribution to the construction of the ISS is the Columbus Research Laboratory, which supports scientific and technological research in a microgravity environment with experiments in materials science, fluid physics, life science, and technology. The Columbus module is permanently berthed to Harmony (Node 2).