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The 39th meeting of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) was held 14-22 July 2012 in Mysore, India.

This report to COSPAR on the scientific activities of the European Space Agency was written by members of the Directorate of Earth Observation, the Directorate of Human Spaceflight and Operations and the Directorate of Science and Robotic Exploration.

Contents:

• Foreword by Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General, ESA
• Earth Observation
  1. Introduction
  2. The Living Planet Programme
  3. The Earth Explorer Missions
  4. ERS and Envisat
• Human Spaceflight and Operations
  1. Introduction
  2. Overview: Columbus and ISS Facilities
  3. Funding Europe's ISS Research: ELIPS
  4. Research on the ISS
  5. Ongoing Research Using Other Platforms
  6. Projects under Development
• Science and Robotic Exploration
  1. Introduction
  2. Missions in Operation
  3. Missions in the Post-Operations and Archiving Phases
  4. Projects under Development
  5. Missions under Study

Reference: SRE-PA/2011/117

L1 Mission Reformulation, ATHENA

This report summarises the findings of the ESA review on the reformulation of IXO, the International X-ray Observatory (L class mission candidate of the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme), into the new mission concept named ATHENA (Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics).

The review, completed at the end of the reformulation exercise, establishes the overall feasibility and credibility of the L1 mission candidate reformulated concept - for both platform and payload - for a launch in 2022, and an ESA cost at completion of 850 MEuro (e.c. 2010).

The ATHENA (Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics) concept results from the reformulation of the IXO mission into a European-led mission.

This report, the so-called Yellow Book, contains the results of ESA's assessment study (Phase 0/A) of the candidate L-class Cosmic Vision mission ATHENA.