NASA MEPAG Memo: Mars Express Science Workshop

Mars Express Science Workshop

21-25 February 2005

ESTEC, Noordwijk, Netherlands

Dear Colleague,

Following some criticism concerning the final dates chosen for the Mars Express Science
Workshop, let me clarify a few points. The final dates (21-25 February 2005) are in fact the third
set of dates being proposed, but each time somebody did not like them.

Originally, this workshop was planned to be merged with the International Mars Conference (1923
September at Ischia) but there were complaints that not enough time had been allocated for
each PI, and anyway it was preferable to have a dedicated scientific meeting for Mars Express.
The second set of dates (22-26 November at ESTEC) turned out to be very inconvenient for our
American colleagues, as this is the traditional Thanksgiving holiday. So, we selected another set
of dates given the extremely scarce availability of rooms in ESTEC (we need a huge
room [Newton 1+2] for the oral presentations and another room [Einstein] for the poster
sessions) for a whole week, plus the desired support for public outreach/communications. The
earlier possible week for a dedicated science workshop supported and organised by ESA was
the last week of February. It is just impossible to please everybody.

As some of you would have desired the selected dates to be earlier, let me remind you that
there are quite a number of scientific meetings before those dates where all the scientists
involved in the mission are free to present their scientific results.

These are:

• International Mars Conference, 19-23 September 2004, Ischia, Italy.
• Workshop on the Origin and Modification of the Martian Crustal Dichotomy, 30 Sept. – 01 Oct. 2004, Houston, Texas, USA.
• Second Conference on Early Mars, 11-15 Oct. 2004, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA.
• 40th Vernadsky-Brown Symposium on Comparative Planetology, Vernadsky Institute, Moscow, Russia, TBD October 2004.
• Fourth European Workshop on Exo/Astrobiology, 22-25 Nov. 2004, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.
• Workshop on Low-frequency Radar investigations of Planetary and Terrestrial Environments, 07-10 Feb. 2005, Houston, Texas, USA.

In fact, the selected dates for the Mars Express workshop in February 2005 are not so bad, as it
would have been too much to add another meeting to be squeezed in within the above list. Our
ESA workshop comes before next year major scientific events of the 36th LPSC (14-18 March
2005 in Houston) and the 2nd EGU (25-29 April 2005 in Vienna).

This note is being circulated to some recipients of the previous one only. While I am happy to
have people’s feedback (individually) on the above, I am not ready to entertain an open forum
among hundreds of people on the likeability of these dates, first out of politeness, and second
because the dates are final. I hope you will all support the MEX Science Workshop.

Best regards,

Agustin Chicarro