ESA-ISAS Bilateral Conference

The conference was held in ISAS on
June 15. people from ESA including the Director of Science D. Southwood
and the Head of Science Programme Coordination & Planning G. Cavallo,
12 people from ISAS including the Director-General Matsuo and the Planning
& Coordination Division Chief Matsumoto, and the aide to the Director-General
for International Affairs Okamoto from the Ministry of Education, Culture,
Sports, Science and Technology participated.

This was quite exceptional as a meeting with European participants (though
quite normal in ISAS) in that it was conducted on Saturday. Four of the
6 participants from ESA had a tough schedule of coming to Japan from Thursday
to Friday, participating in this conference on Saturday, going back to
Europe on Sunday and working as usual from Monday.

ISAS and ESA maintains a deep and extensive collaborative relationship
concerning spacecrafts, and this conference, therefore, covered a wide
range of topics from BepiColombo (Mercury Probe Mission), ASTRO-F (Infrared
Astronomy Satellite), Mars Express NOZOMI (Mars Probe Mission), Venus
Express Planet-C (Venus Probe Mission), SOLAR-B (Solar Observation), VSOP
(Space VLBI), XEUS (Space X-ray), and to SELENE-B (Lunar Mission). Further
promotion of closer collaborative relationship was confirmed.

After the conference, the party made a brief tour of the ISAS facilities.
Exceptionally and fortunately, big stars such as flight models of MUSES-C
and ASTRO-F and mechanical model of SOLAR-B were displayed in a row, which
greatly pleased the ESA participants. With Japanese-style, carefully attended
support provided by the staff in the International Affairs Section, we
were able to successfully manage the conference, which was praised, “Extremely
well-organized meeting!”