Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 368, Gateway, Japan, and Deep Space. I'm Leah Cheshire and I will be your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts, all to let you know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight and more. You'll recall last year we devoted not one,

not two, not three episodes to Gateway, but we did four. And that's because when it comes to

humanity's first lunar space station, there is just so much to talk about. The science, the advanced

robotics, the cargo missions, how Gateway will support Mars forward planning, and of course, Gateway's

international partners. We heard directly from astronauts at NASA, the European Space Agency,

the Canadian Space Agency, and the Muhammad bin Rashid Space Center of the United Arab Emirates.

Well, what about the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or Jaxa? That's why we're here today to hear directly from Akihoshide,

Jaxa astronaut, veteran of three missions to the International Space Station and Space Walker,

about how Jaxa is contributing to the Lunar Space Station and Artemis writ large.

So here it is, your bonus fifth gateway episode.

Enjoy.

Music it is, your bonus fifth gateway episode. Enjoy. Oscar, advice are correct. Here we have a podcast.

Aki, for the second time in your astronaut career, welcome back to Houston.

We have a podcast.

Thank you.

It's good to be back here.

You know, we are so happy to have you here today because we've gone through all four of our Gateway podcast episodes and we got to hear from astronauts,

from NASA, from Canada, Europe, and the UAE.

They were all talking about Gateway and their contributions.

And our listeners did get to hear about the Jaxa contributions, but we wanted to hear

directly from Jaxa before we close out this podcast series.

So thank you again for being here to round out the Gateway series in the best possible way.

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