Nicosia will host an International Space Summit with the participation of the world’s top scientists on October 15-19 that will among other discuss international co-operation for future exploration missions to Mars .
The International Space Summit of the world’s top space organisations is being hosted by the Cyprus Space Exploration Organisation (CSEO).
The summit will be attended by top-level scientists, such as the Chief Scientist of NASA James Green, the Director of Space Research Institute of Russia, the Minister of State of Advanced Sciences of the UAE, and other top officials and scientists from Europe, India and China.
During their meetings in Cyprus, they will discuss and decide the future of Mars space missions as well as international cooperation.
President of CSEO George Danos told the Cyprus News Agency that it was a great honour for Cyprus to host a conference of this level.
“Our Organisation has worked for years to put Cyprus dynamically in the space sector and these efforts are yielding results in the best possible way,” he said.
He added that the conference will discuss international co-operation for future exploration missions to Mars.
Danos noted that Cyprus was considered a suitable location for the conference due to the international relations the Organisation has with countries with space research.
CSEO’s Strategic Partner for the organisation of this seminar is the Municipality of Nicosia.
According to the scientific organising committee of the conference, CSEO offers the site and logistical framework for such a meeting in Nicosia, a place where many of the new players in Mars atmospheric research can easily meet in a friendly international environment: right at the edge of Europe, but close to Russia, Asia, the Middle East, and Northern Africa.
They have also invited representatives from other Mars missions and atmospheric research fields to present their outlook and available opportunities in a wider general brainstorming session and discuss future multi/spacecraft multi/instrument (space and ground based) collaborations on Mars.
The seminar in Cyprus intends to export a winning concept of multi-instrument multi-mission collaboration at Earth to another planet, and use the Mars Upper Atmosphere Network MUAN work-form to enable that.
Recently, Marcello Coradini, a renowned top ESA/NASA scientist and Chairman of the CSEO International Council, ]told the Cyprus News Agency that Mars “is the ultimate goal, the only planet in our solar system where we can imagine humanity creating a new society.”
Coradini pointed out that the objective to get humans to Mars will not be easy.
“There is a lot of preparation to do, maybe the moon can be a stepping stone, testing some technologies, landing on asteroids, and mining asteroids can be another stepping stone. Mars is the ultimate goal, it is the planet that resembles the earth and it is the only planet in the solar system that we could imagine human beings settling again and creating a new society,” he stressed.
In 1991, the International Astronomical Union named asteroid 4598 after him for his contributions to asteroidal science and exploration.
(Cyprus News Agency)
