Environmental modelling for solar system exploration

The European Space Agency will organise a symposium on environmental modelling for solar system exploration, to be held in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, from 26 to 29 April 1999. The symposium will cover the environments of various planets, their satellites, asteroids and comets, including the modelling of surface conditions, atmospheres and interactions with the interplanetary environment. The emphasis will not be on planetary science as such, but rather on those aspects of physics that can help define better environmental models to support the design of exploratory models.

Discussions will focus on topics such as:

- The construction of time and space dependent databases;
- The modelling of variability on different timescales;
- The extrapolation of data in time;
- The exploitation of existing data for validation;
- The review of existing climate databases;
- The interfacing of databases with mission analysis software.

In addition, the design of specific experiments aimed at the validation of environment models, or at the retrieval of parameters which are needed to enable the definition of such models will also be discussed during the symposium.

The conference organisers are currently seeking the submission of papers for presentation during the conference. The final date for the submission of abstracts will be 23 October 1998.
For further information, please contact:

ESTEC Conference Bureau
PO Box 299
2200 AG Noordwijk
The Netherlands
Tel. +31-71-5655005; Fax +31-71-5655658
E-mail: confburo@estec.esa.nl