[meteorite-list] Malta Symposium on Hazardous Near Earth Asteroids

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:35:53 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <200907211735.n6LHZrGM011694_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://nea2009.cosmos.ru/

Malta Symposium on Hazardous Near Earth Asteroids
Russian Cultural and Scientific Center on Malta
October 12-16, 2009

*FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT*

*Preface*


The Year 2009 according to UNESCO is the Year of Astronomy. So many
international scientific conferences, seminars and symposiums are
devoted to the contemporary astronomy achievements and problems at large
during this year. Among these problems high level attention was paid to
the tasks connected with the asteroid hazards. It can be explained by
the discovery of big enough asteroids which were very near with
collision with the Earth. Very impressive example of such asteroid is
Apophis whose very close Earth fly-by is not the last approach to our
planet. Its further approaches to the Earth do not exclude collision.
And such asteroid is not the only one which is considered as candidate
for hitting the Earth with catastrophic consequences.

The interest to the problem is reflected by fact that a very
representative symposium on the matter was held in Spain in Granada in
April and a similar conference is planned to be held in St. Petersburg
in September.
Because of quite clear mainly logistical reasons the participants of
these two events are unfortunately different, which prevents them to
exchange their knowledge and expertise.
The Symposium to be organised in Malta in October 2009 will allow to
overcome this deficiency: it will be held in the Russian Cultural and
Scientific Centre in Malta. It will therefore be easily accessible to
participants from Russia, EU and other countries.

*Themes of Symposium*

The main goal of the Symposium is determined by its title - /Motion
Control of NEOs: Dream or Reality?/

To answer this question the following topics are planned to be included
in the Symposium program:

    * Evaluation of the level of danger of celestial object catastrophic
      collision with the Earth.
    * Instruments and methods of detecting hazardous asteroids and
      determination of their motion. Estimation of asteroids ephemeris
      determination accuracy with the use of different approaches
      presently available and planned to be developed in the future.
    * Possibilities to use contemporary astronautics tools to determine
      and predict motion parameters of asteroids with required accuracy.
    * Existing ground facilities and required characteristics for
      solving the problem of hazardous asteroids.
    * Active and other methods and instruments for asteroids motion
      control in order to prevent their collision with the Earth.

The list of topics given above does not restrict the items to be
discussed during Symposium but gives only overall vision of the tasks area.

*Organizers*


The Symposium is organized by: Russian Ministry of Education and
Science, Russian Cultural and Scientific Center on Malta, Space Research
Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), Institute of
Astronomy of RAS, Institute of Applied Mathematics of RAS with the
support and participation of the European Space Agency (ESA).

*Registration*


If you are interested to participate in this Symposium, please fill out
the *Registration Form* <regform.php>.

*Call for papers*


The approximately 500-word abstract is expected to describe main ideas
and problems of the paper and proposed solutions. It should be submitted
not later than August 30th, 2009. The Program committee will inform the
author about acceptance of the paper not later than September 10th, 2009.

Abstract should not exceed 2 pages (with figures) and can be submitted
as Microsoft Word DOC, PDF or TXT (plain text) files. The maximum
accepted filesize is 2 MBytes. Abstracts must include the title,
authors, their affiliations and text. Abstract file names should use the
following template: Authorlastname_NEA2009.doc/pdf/txt (as
Smith_NEA2009.pdf).

You can upload your abstract using *Abstract submission form*
<http://nea2009.cosmos.ru/upload/>.

*Venue and terms*


Symposium will be held within the Russian Cultural and Scientific Centre
in Malta from the 12^th to the 16^th of October 2009.

*Program Committee*

    * Lev Zelenyi, co-chairman, Space Research Institute (IKI) of
      Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS)
    * Nicolas Bobrinsky, co-chairman, ESA (ESOC)
    * Efraim Akim, co-chairman, Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics
      of RAS
    * Dr. Turki Al-Saud, Vice President, KACST, Saudi Arabia
    * Robert Farquhar, co-chairman, KinetX Co., USA
    * Vyacheslav Voronin, Ministry of Education and Science of Russia
    * Boris Shustov, Institute of Astronomy of RAS
    * Lidia Rykhlova, Institute of Astronomy of RAS
    * Detlef Kochny, ESA (ESTEC)
    * Gerhard Drolshagen, ESA (ESTEC)
    * Zoran Sodnic, ESA (ESTEC)
    * David Dunham, KinetX Co., USA
    * Ravil Nazirov, Space Research Institute (IKI) of RAS
    * Vladimir Kurt, Astro Space Center, Physical Institute of RAS
    * Natan Eismont, Space Research Institute (IKI) of RAS


*Contact Information*


Program Committee can be contacted by email at: nea2009 at cosmos.ru
Symposium website is: http://nea2009.cosmos.ru
Received on Tue 21 Jul 2009 01:35:53 PM PDT