OREANDA-NEWS. March 15, 2010. Heads of Russian and Japanese space agencies have discussed the details of Mercury mission project that must be realized with EU participation.

Perminov said that he has already negotiated this topic with JAXA head Kenji Tachikawa. Meeting agenda included the discussion of details of Mercury mission with ESA participation. This project concerns equipment preparation, spacecraft design, Earth-Mercury flight and Mercury flyby with its surface and atmosphere exploration. Design work is on the way and realization will approximately begin in 2014. 

Perminov have discussed with Tachikawa Russian Japanese space cooperation in three spheres. In the first place it's cooperation in the scope of ISS programme and joint experiments onboard. “We already have good backlogs in this direction. Now, with Japanese “Kibo” segment integrated into ISS structure the opportunities are sufficiently enhanced”, said Perminov. He reminded that: “We have received good results of medical-biological experiments on proteins crystal growth for new anti-tuberculosis medicines recently and such work will be continued”

 Also, according to him, one more possible sphere of cooperation is remote sensing systems design to use these kind of systems results of work  to support sustainable ecological conditions both on Japanese and Russian territory and to provide the information concerning earthquakes and tsunamis.