The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has established the "Basic Plan for Broad-Scale Water Energy Resource Exploration on the Moon Using Terahertz Waves" in order to strategically and advantageously promote the development and utilization of the Moon in the field of ICT in Japan.

Our research team consisting of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), the University of Tokyo, Osaka Prefecture University, the Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency (JAXA), and SpaceBD Co., Ltd. has been commissioned to carry out the purpose. We have named this plan the "Lunar Terahertz SUrveyor for KIlometer-scale MappIng" (TSUKIMI) project, and its primary objective is to obtain information that is useful for understanding the distribution and quantity of water ice and metal resources to a depth of several tens of centimeters below the lunar surface, through broad-scale water energy resource exploration on the Moon using the terahertz waves. 

Here, we provide an overview of the TSUKIMI project, its objectives, and goals, as well as information about the research team working to achieve them.