As IAC Closes, Japan and India Each Sign With Someone Else

India Japan Kaizen — Space Industry Series, Part 5

Part 4 of this series opened with the 77th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) landing in Antalya, Türkiye, and asked whether a record-breaking week of shared visibility would turn into a signed India-Japan space deal before the congress closed on 9 October. It closed on schedule, and the answer is in: real deals did get signed in Antalya that week — by Japan, and separately by India — just not with each other. This part tracks exactly who signed what, where Japan's own space agency chose to spend its spotlight, and the one domestic facility still waiting for a Japanese company to show up.

Two New Lunar Deals From Japan — Neither With India

On 6 October, in Antalya itself, ispace signed two separate memoranda of understanding on the same day.

• ArianeGroup. ispace had already selected ArianeGroup's pulsing thrusters and reaction-control-system thrusters for propulsion on its Mission 3 ULTRA lander — the same lander Part 4 covered as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' H3 payload. The new MOU hands ArianeGroup the lander's assembly, integration and testing (AIT) work too, and opens talks on cooperation beyond ULTRA into future lunar missions.
• Leonardo and Telespazio. A separate same-day MOU ties ispace to the Italian pairing of Leonardo and Telespazio to collaborate on lunar exploration more broadly, with specifics still to be worked out.

Both build directly on the plenary Part 4 flagged on the published programme, "Cis-Lunar Architecture in Practice: Lessons and Leadership from Japan." ispace used exactly the stage that session gave it — and used it to deepen ties with Europe, not India.

JAXA's Own Pitch in Antalya Pointed at Turkey

JAXA president Yamakawa Hiroshi gave his own answer to where Japan wants to deepen space cooperation next, and it also wasn't India. Speaking to Anadolu Agency at the congress, he said IAC 2026 was itself a platform for taking Japan's cooperation with Türkiye further, pointing to existing joint work using satellite data for disaster response as the basis for a planned expansion. Between ispace's two new European MOUs and JAXA's own president spending his Antalya remarks on the host country, the pattern Part 4 already flagged — visibility and goodwill compounding faster than contracts — held through the congress's final four days. It just wasn't India collecting the compounding this time.

The Deal India Did Sign at IAC — With Europe, Not Japan

India's own half of that pattern happened at IAC too, just with a different partner. ISRO and the European Space Agency had already extended their bilateral Cooperation Agreement to January 2032 by an exchange of letters in Paris on 10 September, adding space weather and human and robotic exploration to a scope that already covered Earth observation, navigation and space science. What's new since Part 4 is the follow-through at Antalya itself: ESA and ISRO's leadership teams met on the congress's second day, with ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher describing it as a first step toward discussing what an expanded partnership between the two agencies could look like next. It's a real sign that India's institutional space diplomacy was active and producing results during exactly the week this series has been watching — just, again, not with Japan.

The Facility Still Waiting for a Japanese Tenant

Zoom out from Antalya and the gap Part 4 named gets more specific, not less. Back in May, India's Department of Space approved two Common Technical Facilities meant to lower the capital cost of space manufacturing for private companies — one in Khoraj, Gujarat, and one in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, the same district Part 4 named as home to Agnikul and Skyroot's rising integration and testing facilities. Under the ₹100-crore Thoothukudi arrangement, formalized between Tamil Nadu's TIDCO and IN-SPACe, IN-SPACe procures and operates shared testing and integration equipment — vibration, shock, thermal-vacuum and assembly infrastructure — before eventually handing ownership to the state government, while TIDCO supplies the land and buildings. It's effectively the shared-cost infrastructure a mid-sized Japanese component supplier would need to justify a first India plant without building an entire facility alone. Five months after approval, no Japanese company has been named as a tenant, applicant or technical partner at either site.

What's Missing

Four parts of this series have now tracked the same shape from three different angles — talent, manufacturing, and now diplomatic visibility — and each time the conclusion repeats: the infrastructure, the FDI route, and now the shared facilities exist and keep multiplying, but no Japanese company has stepped through any of those open doors into India's space sector specifically. IAC 2026 was the clearest test yet of whether a shared stage would change that, and it closed on 9 October having instead produced two new Japan-Europe lunar MOUs and one deepened India-Europe agency agreement. For a Japanese satellite-component manufacturer, or a mid-sized Indian space-tech supplier looking for an introduction into the other market, Thoothukudi and Khoraj are now concrete, nameable places to start — and this series will be watching for a first Japanese tenant.

If you build, supply or regulate anything in India's or Japan's space sectors — or if you're the first Japanese company willing to take a serious look at Thoothukudi or Khoraj — get in touch. Matching the open door to the right tenant is exactly the kind of introduction India Japan Kaizen wants to make.

This is Part 5 of India Japan Kaizen's Space Industry Series, publishing weekly. Part 4 tracked IAC's opening week and the Kautilya Conclave; Part 6 will check whether any Japanese company applies to use the new Thoothukudi or Khoraj facilities, and whether India and Japan's own space agencies schedule anything comparable to September's ESA extension.