ESA Science & Technology - International Symposium Marco Polo and other Small Body Sample Return Missions

Programme and Presentations

18-20 May 2009

Amphi Buffon, Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7,
15 rue Hélène Brion, Paris13

[Programme last updated: Wednesday 22 April 2009]

Monday May 18

Tuesday May 19

Wednesday May 20

Poster session

Participants

Third Announcement

9 April 2009

The meeting will take place from Monday 18 May 2009, 09:00, to Wednesday, 12:30. The detailed programme can be found here.

Logistics

The meeting will take place in Paris, at the Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7. The precise address is:

Amphi Buffon
15, Rue Hélène Brion
75013 Paris

Metro: line 14 or RER C, station "Bibliothèque F. Mitterand"

Participation

The deadline for registering was 15 March 2009. A list of participants can be found here.

For the meeting organization, we will request a fee of 50 euros to be paid in cash at the meeting registration.

Second Announcement

Logistics

The meeting will take place in Paris, at the Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7. The precise address is:

Amphi Buffon
15, Rue Helene Brion
75013 Paris

Metro: line 14 or RER C, station "Bibliothèque F. Mitterand"

The meeting will start on Monday, 18 May 2009 and will end on Wednesday 20 May 2009. A detailed agenda will be available on the third announcement.

Participation

Please register before March 15 and send the filled-in attendance form that is available under the "Documentation" section in the right-hand navigation (or click here for launching this form in your email editor).

For support of the meeting organization, we will request a fee of 50 euros.

In case of problems contact Detlef.Koschnyesa.int or antonella.barucciobspm.fr, or yoshikawa.makotojaxa.jp for Japanese participants.

First Announcement

18-20 May 2009
(NOTE: new meeting date!)
Paris, France

SOC:
A. Barucci (LESIA, Paris Observatory, Meudon, F, chair) - M. Yoshikawa (JAXA/JSPEC, Sagamihara, J, Co-Chair) - D. Koschny (ESTEC/ESA, NL, co-chair) - R. Binzel (MIT, Boston, USA) - H. Böhnhardt (MPI Lindau, D) - J. Brucato (INAF-OAA, Florence, I) - E. Dotto (INAF-OAR, Rome, I) - I. Franchi (The Open University, UK) - M. Yoshikawa (JAXA/JSPEC, Sagamihara, J) - S. Green (The Open University, UK) - J.-L. Josset (Space Exploration, Neuchatel, CH) - P. Michel (Univ. Nice Sophia-Antopolis, Obs. de la Côte d’Azur, F) - K. Muinonen (Univ. Helsinki Observatory, FIN) - J. Oberst (DLR Berlin, D) - H. Yano (JAXA/JSPEC, Sagamihara, J) - D. Agnolon (ESTEC/ESA, NL) - J. Romstedt (ESTEC/ESA, NL)

LOC:
A. Barucci, R. Binzel, M. Birlan, D. Bockelee-Morvan, S. Fornasier, M. Fulchignoni, N. Letourneur (Paris Observatory)

Announcement

With this announcement, we invite your participation at the International Marco Polo Symposium and Other Small Body Sample Return Missions, jointly co-organized by ESA and JAXA, and sponsored by CNES, the Paris Observatory and JAXA/JSPEC. Marco Polo is a joint European-Japanese sample return mission to a Near-Earth Object (NEO) studied within the ESA Cosmic Vision programme. Marco Polo is currently undergoing a joint Phase-A study between Japan and Europe up to the end of 2009. Marco Polo is being studied in response to ESA's call for mission proposals as part of the new Cosmic Vision programme, suggesting missions with a launch date during 2015-2025. A total of 436 scientists from countries worldwide support the Marco Polo proposal, including a large number of Japanese scientists and engineers who have been involved and are still operating the Hayabusa spacecraft, the world's first sample return mission to an S-type NEO, now being on its way back to the Earth and arriving here in the summer of 2010. Succeeding the legacy of Hayabusa, the Marco Polo mission is currently foreseen as collaboration between ESA and JAXA. The US has also indicated a strong interest in participation.

Small bodies in the solar system are leftover building blocks of the formation of our planetary system. They offer clues to the chemical mixture from which the Earth and other planets formed some 4.6 billion years ago. Current exobiological scenarios for the origin of life invoke an exogenous delivery of organic matter to the early Earth: it has been proposed that primitive bodies could have brought these complex organic molecules capable of triggering the pre-biotic synthesis of biochemical compounds onto the early Earth. Moreover, collisions of NEOs with the Earth pose a finite hazard to life. For these reasons, the exploration of such objects is particularly interesting and urgent.

The principal scientific objective of the Marco Polo mission is to return unaltered primitive material from a NEO, for analysis in terrestrial laboratories, thereby obtaining measurements that cannot be performed from a robotic spacecraft (e.g. dating the major events in the history of a sample).

Workshop objectives

The workshop objectives are to present the current status of the Marco Polo study activities within ESA and JAXA together with participations of international scientists, engineers and industries the international planning that are being put in place to make the mission happen.  We also invite scientific presentations about the current state of asteroid research and sample analysis, in particular addressing the critical role played by NEO sample return missions, and presentations about possible payload elements, sampling requirements, mechanisms, and curation and analysis facilities.

This workshop will provide an opportunity for the wide planetary science community to interact with the Marco Polo Science Study Team, ESA and JAXA to further refine the mission's goals, its science drivers, and the required technology developments for the science payload.

Proposed Programme

• Importance of returned samples from small bodies in understanding Solar System origin and evolution
  

  -	The relevance of small body composition in determining the planetary nebula environmental conditions
  -	The content of organic matter in primitive small bodies
  -	The age of major events in early Solar System history (end of nucleosynthesis, agglomeration, crystallization, heating, degassing...)
  -	Are meteorites really representative of the asteroid population?
  -	The role of the water in the Solar System formation
  -	Prebiotic imprints on the small bodies
  -	Key measurements (remote, in situ and terrestrial laboratories)

• Relevant science of target objects (asteroids, dormant comets)
• Evolution and physical properties of asteroidal regolith
• Hayabusa: On-going sample return mission and major results
• Currently proposed sample-return missions - an overview
  

  -	Hayabusa-2
  -	Marco Polo
  -	Phobos-Grunt
  -	OSIRIS
  -	Gallahad
  -	Others

• Relevant mission studies
  

  -	Leonard - a national European Agencies study on a NEO mission
  -	ASTEX - a German mission study to deploy landers on two asteroids
  -	NEA-SR - a sample return mission to a Near-Earth Asteroid
  -	Others

• International collaborations - opportunities and challenges
• Technical challenges for sample return
  

  -	Science instrument development
  -	Mission design of deep space round trip
  -	Microgravity lander and rover technologies
  -	Low thrust propulsion technologies
  -	Deep space network
  -	Current activities concerning re-entry technology
  -	Observation campaigns of re-entries
  -	Sampling mechanisms - current technology developments
  -	Curation facilities
  -	Micro- and nano-analysis techniques
  -	Space quarantine - categories revisited

Logistics

The meeting will take place in Paris, at CNES or Paris Observatory (venue will be fixed in the second announcement depending on the attendance). The meeting will start on Monday 18 May 2009 (NOTE: new meeting date!) and will end on Wednesday 20 May 2009 (NOTE: new meeting date!). A detailed agenda will be given later.

Therefore, we strongly encourage participants to register as soon as possible and no later than 15 January 2009.

Participation

To organize our Workshop most effectively, we need to receive your response indicating your interest and possible participation.  To respond to this announcement and receive further information as it becomes available, please send the filled-in attendance form that is available under the "Documentation" section in the right-hand navigation. For organization, we wish to have your first response no later than 15 January 2009.

In case of problems contact Detlef.Koschnyesa.int or antonella.barucciobspm.fr, or yoshikawa.makotojaxa.jp for Japanese participants

Travel Grant

A limited number of travel grants by JAXA/JSPEC are available for presenting participants who will depart from and return to Japan. For those who wish to apply for the grant, please send your name, affiliation, contact address, email account, presentation title and abstract to Prof. Makoto Yoshikawa of JAXA/JSPEC no later than 15 January 2009.