Agencies of the two countries had signed an MoU

Japan and India are trying to strengthen their collaboration in space and it could lead to a few tie-ups between their respective agencies in the coming years, Japanese Ambassador to India Kenji Hiramatsu said on Tuesday.

Space agencies of the two countries signed an MoU in space cooperation a couple of years ago.

“At this stage I am not sure what kind of projects we have in mind. But collaboration in the area of space is very important to us. Both countries have a lot of experience in doing business in the space industry. I hope that tie-ups will take place between Indian Space Research Organisation and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency,” Mr. Hiramatsu said.

He was interacting with a small gathering at the campus of space startup TeamIndus, which is collaborating with a Japanese startup iSpace / Team Hakuto.

The two teams are jointly sending their separate, private-funded Moon rovers on the same Indian PSLV rocket sometime in the coming months as part of a $ 20-million global Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP) contest. Hakuto’s rover will ride on TeamIndus’s spacecraft to Moon.

Japanese scientific entities have so far sent four small satellites to space using ISRO’s PSLV rocket, the last one flown as recently as in June this year. A bigger joint meteorology satellite may be in the pipeline, ISRO officials had said earlier. About the proposed yen- aided Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor, Mr. Hiramatsu said many small and mid-sized Japanese enterprises were keen on investing in its opportunities.

The Tumakuru township was one such.

The project, he said, would spur a new kind of futuristic Indo-Japanese cooperation driven by startups and technology entities.