Columbia's Crash to Affect Japan's Space Program

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, February 02, 2003

Columbia's Crash to Affect Japan's Space Program

Japan's space program is likely to be affected in many ways by the explosion of the US space shuttle Columbia, Kyodo News reported Sunday.

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Japan's space program is likely to be affected in many ways by the explosion of the US space shuttle Columbia, Kyodo News reported Sunday.

Koji Yamamoto, executive director of the National Space Development Agency (NASDA), said that the loss will inevitably affect the planned March 1 launch of the space shuttle Atlantis, whose crew includes a Japanese.

The disaster involving Columbia will also affect Japan's plan to build a module in the International Space Station and other programs on how to use the space station, he said.

According to Kyodo, US space shuttles are the main vehicles for ferrying astronauts and equipment to the space station.

When the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, there was ahiatus of two years and eight months before the US space shuttle program was resumed, Kyodo said.

Japan's existing plan is to launch the experiment module "Kibo"(Hope) on board a US space shuttle in 2007 and dock it with the space station, Kyodo said.

Among the experiments conducted at Columbia were a series of experiments designed by the NASDA and an experiment proposed by Japan to research the swimming pattern of killifish after their eggs were hatched in space.

The first Japanese woman astronaut, Chiaki Mukai, who flew the Columbia in 1994, was part of the team responsible for killifish project. The team has heard that the eggs already hatched, Kyodo added.

According to NASDA, the Columbia also conducted a Japanese experiment to see the growth of protein crystals involving six high schools across Japan.

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