JAXA

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency or better known as JAXA is Japan's version of NASA.

Courses

Course 2: MechE
Course 6: EECS
Course 16: AeroAstro

Location

Sagamihara, Kanagawa

Host Type

Research

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was born through the merger of three institutions, namely the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan (NAL) and the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). It was designated as a core performance agency to support the Japanese government's overall aerospace development and utilization. JAXA, therefore, can conduct integrated operations from basic research and development, to utilization.

JAXA became a National Research and Development Agency in April 2015, and took a new step forward to achieve optimal R&D achievements for Japan, according to the government's purpose of establishing a national R&D agency.

Student Story|Tanya Smith, EECS, '20

Tanya Smith, EECS, '20

"I would only recommend an internship at JAXA for people who are comfortable being extremely self-directed. The internship experience at JAXA (though it may vary from lab to lab) seems to usually consist of a lot of freedom and very little guidance. This can be a good thing, but it can also be a little overwhelming."

Tanya with some of her co-workers

This summer I was working on an internship in robotics in the Kubota Lab at JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) / ISAS (Institute of Space and Astronautical Science). My role in the project was designing and implementing a stereo vision system to reconstruct the surrounding environment in the form of a 3D point cloud, meant for a hopping robot with a single light source in a dark planetary cave. I selected the stereo camera, implemented code to take depth information from the camera as it moved around the “cave” and transform it into a point cloud, and tested this reconstruction process in a simulated cave environment with different lighting conditions. Through completing these tasks, I gained knowledge about how stereo vision works and the 3D reconstruction process, as well as a general understanding of the kind of work that goes on at a place like JAXA.

 

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