Wednesday, August 28, 2024

SPACE

In six new rogue worlds, Webb Telescope finds more star birth clues



Johns Hopkins University

NGC1333 

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New image from the James Webb Space Telescope spectroscopic survey of NGC1333.

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Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Scholz, K. Muzic, A. Langeveld, R. Jayawardhana




The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted six likely rogue worlds—objects with planetlike masses but untethered from any star’s gravity—including the lightest ever identified with a dusty disk around it.

The elusive objects offer new evidence that the same cosmic processes that give birth to stars may also play a common role in making objects only slightly bigger than Jupiter.

“We are probing the very limits of the star forming process,” said lead author Adam Langeveld, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University. “If you have an object that looks like a young Jupiter, is it possible that it could have become a star under the right conditions? This is important context for understanding both star and planet formation.”

The findings come from Webb’s deepest survey of the young nebula NGC1333, a star-forming cluster about a thousand light-years away in the Perseus constellation. A new image from the survey released today by the European Space Agency shows NGC1333 glowing with dramatic displays of interstellar dust and clouds. A paper detailing the survey’s findings has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal.

Webb’s data suggest the discovered worlds are gas giants 5-10 times more massive than Jupiter. That means they are among the lowest-mass objects ever found to have grown from a process that would generally produce stars and brown dwarfs, objects straddling the boundary between stars and planets that never ignite hydrogen fusion and fade over time.

“We used Webb’s unprecedented sensitivity at infrared wavelengths to search for the faintest members of a young star cluster, seeking to address a fundamental question in astronomy: How light an object can form like a star?” said Johns Hopkins Provost Ray Jayawardhana, an astrophysicist and senior author of the study. “It turns out the smallest free-floating objects that form like stars overlap in mass with giant exoplanets circling nearby stars.”

The telescope’s observations revealed no objects lower than five Jupiter masses despite possessing sufficient sensitivity to detect such bodies. That’s a strong indication that any stellar objects lighter than this threshold are more likely to form the way planets do, the authors concluded.

“Our observations confirm that nature produces planetary mass objects in at least two different ways—from the contraction of a cloud of gas and dust, the way stars form, and in disks of gas and dust around young stars, as Jupiter in our own solar system did,” Jayawardhana said.

The most intriguing of the starless objects is also the lightest, having an estimated mass of five Jupiters (about 1,600 Earths). The presence of a dusty disk means the object almost certainly formed like a star, as space dust generally spins around a central object in the early stages of star formation, said Langeveld, a postdoctoral researcher in Jayawardhana’s group. 

Disks are also a prerequisite for the formation of planets, suggesting the observations may also have important implications for potential “mini” planets.

“Those tiny objects with masses comparable to giant planets may themselves be able to form their own planets,” said co-author Aleks Scholz, an astrophysicist at the University of St Andrews. “This might be a nursery of a miniature planetary system, on a scale much smaller than our solar system.”

Using the NIRISS instrument on Webb, the astronomers measured the infrared light profile (or spectrum) of every object in the observed portion of the star cluster and reanalyzed 19 known brown dwarfs. They also discovered a new brown dwarf with a planetary-mass companion, a rare finding that challenges theories of how binary systems form.

“It’s likely that such a pair formed the way binary star systems do, from a cloud fragmenting as it contracted,” Jayawardhana said. “The diversity of systems that nature has produced is remarkable and pushes us to refine our models of star and planet formation.”

Rogue worlds may originate from collapsing molecular clouds that lack the mass for the nuclear fusion that powers stars. They can also form when gas and dust in disks around stars coalesce into planetlike orbs that are eventually ejected from their star systems, probably because of gravitational interactions with other bodies.

These free-floating objects blur classifications of celestial bodies because their masses overlap with gas giants and brown dwarfs. Even though such objects are considered rare in the Milky Way galaxy, the new Webb data show they account for about 10% of celestial bodies in the targeted star cluster.

In the coming months, the team will study more of the faint objects’ atmospheres and compare them to heavier brown dwarfs and gas giant planets. They have also been awarded time on the Webb telescope to study similar objects with dusty disks to explore the possibility of forming mini planetary systems resembling Jupiter’s and Saturn’s numerous moons.

Other authors are Koraljka Mužić and Daniel Capela of Universidade de Lisboa; Loïc Albert, René Doyon, and David Lafrèniere of Université de Montréal; Laura Flagg of Johns Hopkins; Matthew de Furio of University of Texas at Austin; Doug Johnstone of Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre; and Michael Meyer of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

The Deep Spectroscopic Survey for Young Brown Dwarfs and Free-Floating Planets used the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope, a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency.

The authors acknowledge support from the UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council, the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), the U.S. National Science Foundation, and the National Research Council of Canada.

NGC1333_b 

EHT scientists make highest-resolution observations yet from the surface of Earth


ESO
Illustration of the highest-resolution detections ever made from the surface of Earth 

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This artist’s impression shows the locations of multiple radio observatories across the planet, which participated in a pilot experiment conducted by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration that obtained the highest-resolution observations from the ground. The test observations detected light from distant galaxies at a wavelength of 0.87 mm and were made with some of the observatories (in red) that are part of the EHT, a virtual Earth-sized telescope. One of these distant, point-like galaxies is represented on the top right, sending out radio signals all the way to Earth.

 

While non-ideal weather conditions hampered the observations at some of the sites, the team was able to observe multiple galaxies using multiple stations. Robust detections were made using different pairs of telescopes, indicated as glowing dots: the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) in the Atacama Desert in Chile, ALMA and the IRAM 30-meter telescope in Spain, and ALMA and the Submillimeter Array in Hawaiʻi.

 

The EHT Collaboration is famous for connecting telescopes around the world, using a technique called very long baseline interferometry, to obtain images of supermassive black holes. Previous EHT observations were made at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. By observing a distant active galaxy at a lower wavelength, researchers were able to capture even higher resolution images without forming a bigger virtual telescope.

 

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Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser




The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has conducted test observations, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and other facilities, that achieved the highest resolution ever obtained from the surface of Earth [1]. They managed this feat by detecting light from distant galaxies at a frequency of around 345 GHz, equivalent to a wavelength of 0.87 mm. The Collaboration estimates that in future they will be able to make black hole images that are 50% more detailed than was possible before, bringing the region immediately outside the boundary of nearby supermassive black holes into sharper focus. They will also be able to image more black holes than they have done so far. The new detections, part of a pilot experiment, were published today in The Astronomical Journal.

The EHT Collaboration released images of M87*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the M87 galaxy, in 2019, and of Sgr A*, the black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, in 2022. These images were obtained by linking together multiple radio observatories across the planet, using a technique called very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), to form a single ‘Earth-sized’ virtual telescope. 

To get higher-resolution images, astronomers typically rely on bigger telescopes — or a larger separation between observatories working as part of an interferometer. But since the EHT was already the size of Earth, increasing the resolution of their ground-based observations called for a different approach. Another way to increase the resolution of a telescope is to observe light of a shorter wavelength — and that’s what the EHT Collaboration has now done.

With the EHT, we saw the first images of black holes using the 1.3-mm wavelength observations, but the bright ring we saw, formed by light bending in the black hole’s gravity, still looked blurry because we were at the absolute limits of how sharp we could make the images,” said the study's co-lead Alexander Raymond, previously a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), and now at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in the United States. “At 0.87 mm, our images will be sharper and more detailed, which in turn will likely reveal new properties, both those that were previously predicted and maybe some that weren’t.” 

To show that they could make detections at 0.87 mm, the Collaboration conducted test observations of distant, bright galaxies at this wavelength [2]. Rather than using the full EHT array, they employed two smaller subarrays, both of which included ALMA and the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner in ALMA and co-hosts and co-operates APEX. Other facilities used include the IRAM 30-meter telescope in Spain and the NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) in France, as well as the Greenland Telescope and the Submillimeter Array in Hawaiʻi.

In this pilot experiment, the Collaboration achieved observations with detail as fine as 19 microarcseconds, meaning they observed at the highest-ever resolution from the surface of Earth. They have not been able to obtain images yet, though: while they made robust detections of light from several distant galaxies, not enough antennas were used to be able to accurately reconstruct an image from the data. 

This technical test has opened up a new window to study black holes. With the full array, the EHT could see details as small as 13 microarcseconds, equivalent to seeing a bottle cap on the Moon from Earth. This means that, at 0.87 mm, they will be able to get images with a resolution about 50% higher than that of previously released M87* and SgrA* 1.3-mm images. In addition, there’s potential to observe more distant, smaller and fainter black holes than the two the Collaboration has imaged thus far.

EHT Founding Director Sheperd “Shep” Doeleman, an astrophysicist at the CfA and study co-lead, says: “Looking at changes in the surrounding gas at different wavelengths will help us solve the mystery of how black holes attract and accrete matter, and how they can launch powerful jets that stream over galactic distances.” 

This is the first time that the VLBI technique has been successfully used at the 0.87 mm wavelength. While the ability to observe the night sky at 0.87 mm existed before the new detections, using the VLBI technique at this wavelength has always presented challenges that took time and technological advances to overcome. For example, water vapour in the atmosphere absorbs waves at 0.87 mm much more than it does at 1.3 mm, making it more difficult for radio telescopes to receive signals from black holes at the shorter wavelength. Combined with increasingly pronounced atmospheric turbulence and noise buildup at shorter wavelengths, and an inability to control global weather conditions during atmospherically sensitive observations, progress to shorter wavelengths for VLBI — especially those that cross the barrier into the submillimetre regime — has been slow. But with these new detections, that’s all changed.

"These VLBI signal detections at 0.87 mm are groundbreaking since they open a new observing window for the study of supermassive black holes", states Thomas Krichbaum, a co-author of the study from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, an institution that operates the APEX telescope together with ESO. He adds: "In the future, the combination of the IRAM telescopes in Spain (IRAM-30m) and France (NOEMA) with ALMA and APEX will enable imaging of even smaller and fainter emission than has been possible thus far at two wavelengths, 1.3 mm and 0.87 mm, simultaneously."

Notes

[1] There have been astronomical observations with higher resolution, but these were obtained by combining signals from telescopes on the ground with a telescope in space: https://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/pressreleases/2022/2. The new observations released today are the highest-resolution ones ever obtained using only ground-based telescopes. 

[2] To test their observations, the EHT Collaboration pointed the antennas to very distant ‘active’ galaxies, which are powered by supermassive black holes at their cores and are very bright. These types of sources help to calibrate the observations before pointing the EHT to fainter sources, like nearby black holes.

More information

This EHT Collaboration research was presented in a paper by A. W. Raymond et al. published today in The Astronomical Journal (doi: 10.3847/1538-3881/ad5bdb).

The EHT Collaboration involves more than 400 researchers from Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America, with around 270 participating in this paper. The international collaboration aims to capture the most detailed black hole images ever obtained by creating a virtual Earth-sized telescope. Supported by considerable international efforts, the EHT links existing telescopes using novel techniques — creating a fundamentally new instrument with the highest angular resolving power that has yet been achieved. 

The EHT consortium consists of 13 stakeholder institutes; the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the University of Arizona, the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, the University of Chicago, the East Asian Observatory, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique, Large Millimeter Telescope, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, MIT Haystack Observatory, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and Radboud University. 

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of ESO, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA. 

The Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) is a 12-metre-diameter telescope, operating at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths — between infrared light and radio waves. ESO operates APEX at one of the highest observatory sites on Earth, at an elevation of 5100 metres, high on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile’s Atacama region. APEX is a project of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), hosted and operated by ESO on behalf of the MPIfR.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration for astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as survey telescopes such as VISTA. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates ALMA on Chajnantor, a facility that observes the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chilean partners and society.

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SpaceX set to launch historic mission with first-ever spacewalk by private citizens

SpaceX is set to launch its Polaris Dawn mission, featuring an all-civilian crew aiming for the first private citizen spacewalk, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida during a window starting Wednesday at 3:38 am local time. An earlier launch was postponed due to a helium leak.

Issued on: 28/08/2024 -
SpaceX at the Kennedy Space Center, August 26, 2024 in Florida.
 © CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP

SpaceX is poised for another attempt at launching a daring orbital expedition featuring an all-civilian crew that is aiming to carry out the first-ever spacewalk by private citizens.

The Polaris Dawn mission, organized by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman is now set to lift off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida during a four-hour window beginning on Wednesday at 3:38 am local time (0738 GMT), with backup opportunities available Thursday if required.

Weather conditions appeared 85 percent favorable, according to a US Space Force forecast.

An earlier launch attempt on Tuesday was scrapped due to a helium leak on a line connecting the tower to the rocket.

Riding atop a Falcon 9 rocket, the SpaceX Dragon capsule is set to reach a peak altitude of 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) -- higher than any crewed mission in more than half a century, since the Apollo era.

Mission commander Isaacman will guide his four-member team through the mission's centerpiece: the first-ever spacewalk carried out by non-professional astronauts, equipped with sleek, newly developed SpaceX extravehicular activity (EVA) suits.

Rounding out the team are mission pilot Scott Poteet, a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel; mission specialist Sarah Gillis, a lead space operations engineer at SpaceX; and mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon, also a lead space operations engineer at SpaceX.

The quartet underwent more than two years of training in preparation for the landmark mission, logging hundreds of hours on simulators as well as skydiving, centrifuge training, scuba diving, and summiting an Ecuadorian volcano.

Polaris Dawn is set to be the first of three missions under the Polaris program, a collaboration between Isaacman, the founder of tech company Shift4 Payments, and SpaceX.

Isaacman declined to reveal his total investment in the project, though reports suggest he paid around $200 million for the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission in September 2021, the first all-civilian orbital mission.

Polaris Dawn will reach its highest altitude on its first day, venturing briefly into the Van Allen radiation belt, a region teeming with high-energy charged particles that can pose health risks to humans over extended periods.

On day three, the crew will don their state-of-the-art EVA spacesuits -- outfitted with heads-up displays, helmet cameras, and advanced joint mobility systems -- and take turns to venture outside their spacecraft in twos.

Each will spend 15 to 20 minutes in space, 435 miles above Earth's surface.

Also on their to-do list are testing laser-based satellite communication between the spacecraft and Starlink, SpaceX's more than 6,000-strong constellation of internet satellites, in a bid to boost space communication speeds, and conducting nearly 40 scientific experiments.

These include tests with contact lenses embedded with microelectronics to continuously monitor changes in eye pressure and shape.

After six days in space, the mission will conclude with a splashdown off the coast of Florida.

(AFP)

Polaris Dawn: another small step to Mars?
Published 08/23/2024
DW

A private venture aims to break a record for the highest orbit and do a spacewalk in the hazardous Van Allen Belts. Launch now planned for August 28.

The Polaris Dawn mission will be the first to test SpaceX's new EVA (extravehicular activity/ spacewalk) suits, as seen, in part, here
Image: John Kraus/Polaris Program


In the early hours of August 27, 2024, the Polaris Dawn mission was delayed due to an apparent helium leak in ground equipment at the launch site, Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A new launch date was set for Wednesday, August 28, at the original time of 3:38 a.m. US Eastern Time [9:38 a.m. Central European Summer Time /CEST].

If it succeeds, Polaris Dawn will be the first non-government mission to perform a spacewalk. But not only that — it'll do that about 700 kilometers (435 miles) above Earth. The highest ever.

To compare: the International Space Station (ISS) orbits Earth at about 400 kilometers, where the radiation is less intense.

It will also orbit Earth through regions of a highly-charged belt of radiation. There are two of these "Van Allen Belts", an inner and an outer one.

Astronauts tend to avoid the hazardous Van Allen Belts, but they will have to travel through them if humans want to fly to Mars and survive. This privately-funded mission could be a first step toward that goal.

The four astronauts on the Polaris Dawn mission will test new spacesuits, designed by Elon Musk's company, SpaceX, to see how well they protect them against the Van Allen Belt radiation.

SpaceX is also providing the spacecraft — a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule for the crew — to reach an altitude beyond the current record of 1,373 kilometers, set by NASA's Gemini 11 mission in 1966.

Who is the Polaris Dawn crew?
Jared Isaacman, Mission Commander
Scott Poteet, Mission Pilot
Sarah Gillis, Mission Specialist
Anna Menon, Mission Specialist and Medical Officer

Polaris Dawn, the first of a three-part program, is Isaacman's idea.

Jared Isaacman, the tech and military defense entrepreneur behind Polaris Dawn
Image: John Kraus/Polaris Program

Isaacman is a billionaire entrepreneur, who made his money in digital payments and military defense. He previously financed and flew on SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission, the first civilian mission to orbit Earth.

Why are the Van Allen Belts dangerous for humans?

The Van Allen Belts consist of charged particles locked in place by Earth's magnetosphere, which includes its magnetic field.

Earth's magnetosphere traps high-energy radiation particles and protects our planet from solar storms and other threats to daily life from space.

While the outer belt holds high-energy particles from the sun, the inner belt is formed by cosmic rays that interact with Earth's atmosphere.

They were discovered by American physicist James Van Allen in 1958.

The Van Allen Belts range from about 680 kilometers above Earth's surface to what some estimates suggest is about 40,000 kilometers from the surface of the planet. And there's a gap between the first and second belt.

The inner "proton" zone is centered at about 3,000 kilometers from Earth's surface and the outer "electron" zone is centered about 15-20,000 kilometers from Earth's surface.

The Polaris Dawn spacewalk will expose the crew to higher levels of radiation than on the ISS. They hope to collect data on the effects of that radiation as a key scientific experiment.

In 2025, NASA plans to send astronauts beyond the Van Allen Belts to land on the south pole of the moon, and eventually on to Mars. Any data provided by Polaris Dawn will feed into those future missions.


Planned health research on Polaris Dawn


Polaris intends to use data from the mission to create research Biobanks to study the effects of space travel on human biology.

It will investigate the effects of space travel on eyesight and brain structure — a major health risk in space, known as Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome (SANS).

The team also hopes to contribute to studies into decompression sickness (DCS), another health risk during spaceflight. DCS occurs when nitrogen gas bubbles (or gas emboli) damage human tissue.

First test of laser communications in space

The crew will test laser communications provided by SpaceX's Starlink satellite network. Starlink is large satellite constellation, eventually consisting of about 12,000 satellites for communication on Earth and in space. It was used early in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Polaris hopes its communications tests will provide "valuable data for future space communications systems necessary for missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond."

What's planned for future Polaris missions?

Isaacman has committed to three missions in collaboration with SpaceX. This first mission is scheduled to last five days.

The second mission will, they say, "expand the boundaries of future human spaceflight missions, in-space communications, and scientific research."

And the third mission will be the first crewed test of SpaceX's reusable Starship spacecraft.

As with any space mission, the Polaris Dawn launch on August 26, 2024, may be delayed due to extreme weather conditions or technical issues.

Edited by: Zulfikar Abbany

This article was originally published August 23, 2024, and updated with new launch times August 26 and 27, 2024.

Sources:

Polaris Dawn: About the mission https://polarisprogram.com/dawn/

What are the Van Allen Belts and why do they matter? (NASA) https://science.nasa.gov/biological-physical/stories/van-allen-belts/



Matthew Ward Agius Journalist with a background reporting on history, science, health, climate and environment.


COSPAR to sign Memorandum of Understanding with Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organisation




International Science Council Committee on Space Research




Shared vision

The MoU was agreed after a visit to APSCO headquarters in Beijing, China, in July 2024. COSPAR President Prof. Pascale Ehrenfreund and COSPAR General Counsel Mr. Niklas Hedman met with Ms. Aisha Jagirani, the APSCO Director General of External Relations and Legal Affairs Department, who represented APSCO Secretary-General. This partnership is rooted in the organizations’ mutual dedication to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and their active roles as observers in the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). Both COSPAR and APSCO share a vision of fostering cooperation in space science and facilitating dialogue among global space stakeholders.

Fruitful Discussions and Collaborative Initiatives

 During their meeting, the COSPAR and APSCO delegations engaged in productive discussions on shared interests and goals, such as capacity building, education, and the use of small satellites for space science. Ms. Jagirani provided an in-depth presentation on APSCO’s mission and activities, while Mr. Xu Yansong, Director General of APSCO’s Education and Training Department, highlighted APSCO’s educational projects and initiatives aimed at supporting APSCO Member States’ capacity building efforts.

Prof. Ehrenfreund introduced COSPAR’s broad spectrum of activities and emphasized the organization’s pivotal role in fostering international collaboration in space research. Mr. Hedman elaborated on COSPAR’s historical contributions, particularly in Planetary Protection, and outlined the work of COSPAR’s various panels, including those focused on education, capacity building, and planetary protection.

The meeting concluded with both parties agreeing to jointly organize international events on interdisciplinary space topics, collaborate on education and training initiatives, particularly the “Train the Trainers” program, and enhance capacity building and small satellite development. Additionally, they plan to explore cooperation in planetary protection, ionospheric research, space debris monitoring and mitigation, with COSPAR also engaging with the APSCO Space Law Alliance.

In expressing the shared enthusiasm for this partnership, Prof. Ehrenfreund commented, “We look forward to embarking on this new journey of cooperation with APSCO. By combining our strengths, aligned goals and shared vision, we will progress space science and technology advancements for the greater good.”

Ms. Aisha Jagirani echoed this sentiment, stating, “This collaboration marks a significant stride towards our common objectives of advancing space science and fostering cross-border collaboration. The future opportunities arising from this partnership are truly exciting.”

The Memorandum of Understanding will be signed in the coming months and a second meeting will take place in the autumn to move forward with the plans for cooperation. COSPAR will be present at the APSCO/UOS/AUASS International Symposium, 5-7 November 2024, Sharjah, UAE.

Issued by COSPAR Communications, Ms Leigh FERGUS

leigh.fergus@cosparhq.cnes.fr https://cosparhq.cnes.fr/

Note to Editors

COSPAR, the largest international scientific society dedicated to promoting global cooperation in space research, was established in 1958. It serves as a neutral platform for scientific dialogue among scientists from around the world. Today, COSPAR comprises 46 national scientific institutions and 13 international scientific unions, with 13,000 space scientists actively participating in its activities, including attending assemblies, contributing to panels and roadmaps, and publishing in its journals.

COSPAR’s core mission is to facilitate dialogue and encourage international collaboration among space stakeholders across the globe. It operates through scientific commissions, panels and task groups that encompass all disciplines of space science, from Earth and atmospheric sciences to planetary science, astrophysics, solar and space plasma physics, and life and microgravity sciences.

A recent focus has been on strengthening ties between science and industry. This was achieved by forming the Committee on Industry Relations, which includes 18 leading aerospace companies worldwide. The Committee advises COSPAR on integrating industry capabilities into its activities, ensuring mutual benefits for both science and industry.

https://cosparhq.cnes.fr

LinkedIn: Committee on Space Research - COSPAR  

Facebook: Committee on Space Research

X: @CosparHQ

YouTube: COSPAR

Mastodon: @COSPAR@astrodon.social

Instagram: cosparhq

About APSCO The Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO) was established on 16 December 2008, as a not-for-profit, international, inter-governmental organization with full international legal status, having the ‘Convention of APSCO’ registered with the United Nations. APSCO currently has 14 Member States, including eight Full Member: Bangladesh, China, Iran, Mongolia, Pakistan, Peru, Thailand, Türkiye, one Signatory Member: Indonesia (ratification in process), one Associate Member: Egypt (ratification in process) and Four Observers: Mexico, Inter-Islamic network on Space Science and Technology (ISNET), Arab Union for Astronomy and Space Science (AUASS) and Venezuela. China is the host country for APSCO, and the Headquarters of APSO is located in Beijing, China.

APSCO provides a platform for cooperative activities and capacity building in Member States in the field of space science, technology, and its applications. APSCO also contributes to building capacity in the field of space law and policy and has been biennially organizing international symposiums since 2009 as part of its knowledge exchange platform. These events provide a unique knowledge-sharing opportunity for the executives at the national space agencies and space authorities in the Member States of APSCO.

www.apsco.int



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