Abstract
As member of the ISS international partnership program, Japan makes essential contributions to space experiments and enables human space activities through the use of HTVs. JAXA has initiated technical research into cargo return from orbit as a next step toward on-orbit services. The HTV has been used in research as a service module, and a return vehicle called HRV (HTV Return Vehicle) was added to enhance its performance. The combined vehicle is called HTV-R and it will enable JAXA to recover various samples from experiments conducted on the ISS.
