tokyo

Political and legal constraints remain serious obstacles to collaborative space projects, according to a meeting in Tokyo last week of space scientists from the United States, Europe and Japan. These include different approaches to liability waivers and sensitivities to the international transfer of space hardware.

The three-day meeting — attended by representatives from the European Space Science Committee (ESSC), a body associated with the European Science Foundation, the US National Academy of Science's Space Studies Board and the Space Research Committee (SRC) of Japan's Science Council — aimed to identify the key factors in facilitating future international missions.

Participants pointed out that, although international collaboration is increasingly important as space-science budgets decline, this may be discouraged by a shift by the US space agency NASA and the European Space Agency towards smaller, cheaper missions.

A report on US-European space collaboration, released last year by the ESSC, recommended the use of eight criteria to assess whether future international missions are likely to be successful. These included scientific support through peer review and appropriate procedures for data handling (see Nature 394, 112; 1998).

“We are now trying to get Japan into the picture by focusing on the lessons of our past and ongoing collaborations,” says Len Culhane, director of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London and chairman of the ESSC.

“There are issues arising from differences in our administrative systems. But the gaps [between the partners] will have to be filled to make international collaborations more successful.”

According to scientists involved in international missions, such as the Yohkoh solar mission and the X-ray astronomy mission ASCA, collaborations between Europe, Japan and the United States have been scientifically very successful, even though language and cultural differences — as well as Japanese scientists' reluctance to release data — initially caused concern.

However, Japanese researchers expressed concern at last week's meeting over legal differences between Japan and the United States on liability and export matters. They cited tensions between NASA and Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) during the development of GEOTAIL, a satellite for investigating the structure and dynamics of the tail region of the magnetosphere.

Although NASA lawyers had required that each party bear its own risk of participation in a joint space activity, Japanese law does not permit this.

“The issue remains unresolved, and casts a long shadow on future collaboration, but this has to be handled at a higher, political level,” says Atsuhiro Nishida, director of ISAS and chairman of the SRC.

Roger Anderson, an astrophysicist from the University of Iowa and a member of the US Space Studies Board, says there were problems with the international transfer of space hardware on both sides of the Pacific during the development of GEOTAIL. This caused problems with endorsing instruments and “discomfort” for scientists.

“What is most concerning is the impact of current US export regulations not only on hardware but also on the distribution of, and access to, scientific databases,” he says.