Venus Express: One Year in Orbit, Symposium at the 2007 EGU General Assembly Options

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Forwarding an email that was sent out today by Dmitri Titov, Venus Express PI. Cross reference with this UMSF thread.

Dear Colleagues,

the General Assembly of the European Geophysical Union (EGU) will be held on April 15-20, 2007 in Vienna, Austria. The Symposium PS 2.1 "Venus Express: one year in orbit", included in the science Programme, will be focused on presentation and discussion of the results obtained during the first year of the orbital mission. Please find the description of the Symposium at the end of the e-mail and visit the EGU Web site: http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2007/ for more details about the Assembly.

We would like to encourage you to take part in the Symposium and to submit contributed abstracts. Please note that the deadline for abstracts submission is January 15, 2007.

Best regards

Dima Titov and Hakan Svedhem,
The Conveners
_________________________________________________
On April 11, 2006 Venus Express-the first European satellite at Venus- was inserted in orbit around the planet and began collecting data. The results of the first year of observations will be presented at the Symposium. The Programme will consist of solicited talks focused on the Venus Express observations and contributed presentations of the preliminary data analysis. The contributions related to the physics of Venus atmosphere, its plasma environment and the surface and based on the analysis of the data from Venus Express and earlier missions, theoretical studies and numerical modelling are highly welcome. Perspectives of the future Venus exploration will be discussed.

Convener : D. Titov (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany) Co-convener : H. Svedhem (ESA/ESTEC, The Netherlands)

[djellison]

Yes - but there IS someone to observe the event - the scientists on the instrument teams ARE seing this stuff going on - they're just not telling anyone about it.

The apple falls, it's measured by scientists, written in their notebooks -but they don't think to publicise the fact.

Doug

[Bob Shaw]

I think that in the US the space community long ago woke up to the idea that with no bucks, there will be no Buck Rogers - whether manned or unmanned - and that to get the bucks the taxpayers have to see some return (questions of pork etc notwithstanding). In the European context, things are still very cosy, and there's less need to strive for survival - when it's Buggin's turn for funding, out it rolls (oh, and if you're a heretic with a Beagle-ish project you'll never be welcome, and whatever slight funding you're pleased to have will always be just sufficient to cause a convenient failure!).

Don't start me on ELDO. That'd be a rant, and us UMSFers don't do rants, oh no!


Bob Shaw

[JRehling]

[...]

[dvandorn]

I remember the great missions of the 1970s plus the Voyager encounters in the 1980s (especially at Saturn) putting some impressive articles in my small-town hometown newspaper with dazzling images accompanying. The cost of those to NASA must have been tiny. ESA can't muster the equivalent.

The problem isn't that ESA can't muster the equivalent -- it's that they somehow don't seem to see a need to do so.

I think there is more to it than a lack of money -- the incremental increase in funding which would make outreach possible is a tiny percentage of what ESA spends on its other projects. I think that ESA actually believes that they have only one audience -- the scientists and engineers employed by the projects -- and that there is absolutely no reason to serve any other audience. They almost seem arrogantly aggressive about it.

If I were a member of the EU, I would try and get political action going. Contact my MP or whatever and insist that, if ESA can't serve the needs of the people of the EU and is unable to see themselves as anything but a service to a handful of scientists, then perhaps ESA needs to just go away. Eventually, spending large sums on things for which the people aren't given any pay-off will become a political liability, and if ESA can't manage the process, then someone else needs to step in and do it. Or else Europe will end up withdrawing from space activities... and we all know that's a bad idea.

-the other Doug