COSPAR Initiates New Program for Building SmallSat Capacity
COSPAR Initiates New Program for Building SmallSat Capacity
Will Compliment a Similar Program Established in 2001
The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) has launched a new Capacity Building program through collaboration in the field of small satellites (Small Sats). Institutes and universities in developing countries which are interested in developing small satellites by setting up or expanding a local laboratory are invited to join the project.
"Enabling the next generation of space researchers to reap the benefits of the heavy investment and effort in the space sector is vital to continue supporting an ethical and sustainable exploration of space and celestial bodies."
Dr. Jean-Claude Worms, COSPAR
The program is expected to include a one-week workshop at a relevant center leading or having a relevant position within a SmallSats project to which a selected institute sends a team of students in engineering, physics, computer science or related sciences for initial training. After returning to their home institute, the students will carry out collaborative work with that center linked to a satellite being developed within this collaboration, in a mentor-mentee relationship. This collaboration will include the establishment or expansion of a local laboratory at the students’ institute.
An initial agreement with INSPIRE network centers will serve as a launching pad, but the Panel is open to other leading institutions interested in acting as mentors under this program and in finding useful long-term collaborations this way. All costs related to the students’ stay at the initial workshop, including a grant for travel costs, will be covered by COSPAR.
The new Small Sats initiative will complement the well-established program of COSPAR Capacity Building Workshops (CBW), launched in 2001, of which there are roughly three per year. The main objective of this program is to encourage the scientific use of the extensive freely available space data archives and associated analysis software by scientists in developing countries.
A typical two-week workshop aims to provide highly practical “hands-on” training in the use of one or more of these data archives, to enable participants to improve the quality of their research after they return to their home institutes. The team of lecturers are encouraged to provide at least minimal technical advice to participants when they have returned home and perhaps also to set up collaborative research projects. In this way, the workshops also play an important role in fostering professional links and collaborations between participants and international scientists, and are enhanced by the COSPAR Fellowship Program.
“I am pleased to welcome this initiative, as it fulfills several of COSPAR’s founding principles of promoting scientific space research at an international level, open to all scientists; promoting diversity and gender equality in all of its activities; and encouraging meaningful roles for younger scientists, who are the real future of international space research,” said COSPAR president, Professor Pascale Ehrenfreund.
"Enabling the next generation of space researchers to reap the benefits of the heavy investment and effort in the space sector is vital to continue supporting an ethical and sustainable exploration of space and celestial bodies," said COSPAR Executive Director Dr. Jean-Claude Worms. "In particular, it is critical that countries accessing the space field can benefit from the assets and knowledge derived through more than six decades of space exploration. COSPAR has been steadily supporting capacity building with this goal in mind during the past twenty years, bringing in experienced lecturers and scientists to many countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia, to train this next generation of scientists and engineers. As Small Satellites are becoming commonplace and easy to implement at the laboratory and university level, this makes them unique tools in supporting such training and capacity building activities.”
In addition, the Panel relies on a wide network of volunteer scientists working to support its activities and events, all of whom have extensive experience in their field and enthusiasm for developing capacity building in developing countries.