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NIHONBASHI SPACE WEEK 2022 has begun in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, Japan!This event is one of the largest space business exhibitions in Japan, where domestic and international space business players gather in Tokyo. JSLA will be at the event together with Mr. Yamasaki of Uchida & Samejima Law Firm who will be participating as a mentor for “NEDO Supply Chain Data Challenge Finalists”, and other prominent members of JSLA will also be at the event. If you see us, please come and say hello. We look forward to seeing you at the forefront of the space business! Homma Yumiko（本間 由美子）a member of JSLA and an attorney at GVA LPChttps://japan-space-law-association.org/honma-yumiko/https://gvalaw.jp/en/members/yhonma (Source: NIHONBASHI SPACE ...

ispace, inc., a global lunar resource development company in Japan, is planning to launch its lunar lander soon. If they are successful in landing the lander on the moon on the expected schedule, that will be a world first achievement that a private company alone has landed its lander. In addition, ispace has received a license from the Japanese government to conduct business activity on the moon under Japan’s Space Resources Act. Based on the license, they will collect regolith on the moon and transfer ownership of such resources to NASA. The launch was scheduled on November 28, 2022, on SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket; however, the launch attempt has been ...

Since 1992-the year of Convention on Biological Diversity, the biodiversity has become more and more important in the world. And how we figure out the number of the wild species is very fundamental to achieve the goals of CBD. Some species are counted by seeing visually, and some by speculation. Both methods rely on the data we inherited from the past. However, it is yet a little challenging to humans to grasp the entire number of them, because many ecologies are still hidden to us. Therefore, the new tech of the biodiversity map must be an innovated tool for nations to grasp the numbers of wild species and make more ...

The Japanese Diet passed the Space Resources Act on June 15, 2021 and the Act came into force on December 23, 2021. The Act allows persons (including private entities) to explore, extract and use “space resources” meaning water, minerals and other natural resources that exist in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies. Under the Act, a person who intends to obtain a license (which is stipulated in Article 20, paragraph (1) of Space Activity Act) for the control of spacecraft which is exercised over a spacecraft for the purpose of the exploration and development of space resources (such license is defined as the “License for the Exploration ...

On Oct. 7, 2022, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co. Ltd., one of the major Japanese insurance companies (“Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance”), and ispace, inc., a Japanese lunar exploration company (“ispace”), announced that they jointly developed the world’s first “lunar insurance” that seamlessly covers the entire process from the launch of the rocket to the landing on the moon. This lunar insurance was developed with ispace’s lunar development mission in mind, but it appears that Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance intends to add the same type of insurance to its product lineup and offer it to companies that are planning to conduct lunar development projects. According to published information, this lunar insurance is designed to ...