Astronauts, Cosmonauts, Experts complete report: Asteroid Threats: A Call for Global Response

Note: Press packets will be available at the reception area outside the press conference and online at http://www.space-explorers.org/NEO_presskit.pdf on Thursday morning, 25 September.

For the past two years the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) — the international organization of astronauts and cosmonauts from 34 countries — has been developing a program to protect the Earth from asteroid impacts.

To assist it in developing this decision program for the international community, the ASE’s Near-Earth Object (NEO) Committee formed a distinguished international Panel on Asteroid Threat Mitigation. The Committee then organized a series of four workshops with the Panel to identify and address the international legal, political, scientific and disaster management aspects of the challenge.

The findings and recommendations from this work, Asteroid Threats: A Call for Global Response, will be detailed in a special press briefing to be held on September 25, 2008 at the Offices of the Google Foundation in San Francisco, California.

The results of this two-year effort will be submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) in its 2009 sessions in Vienna, Austria for deliberation and action.

The ASE NEO Committee and its Panel will complete its deliberations in a final workshop in San Francisco, September 22-25. At the close of this workshop the ASE and its Panel of international experts will hold a press conference to announce the results of its program and its plans for bringing its recommendations to the attention of the world’s space agencies and political leaders.

WHEN: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2008 at 10:00 A.M.

WHERE: Offices of the Google Foundation
345 Spear St., 4th Floor, Duboce Triangle
San Francisco, California

Following the press conference individual astronauts, cosmonauts and Panel members will be available for personal interviews.