Dear colleagues,
First of all let me wish you all a very Happy New Year for 2007. I have
a couple of items of news to report.
1. One of the EU-funded astronomy networks (Astronet) has just released
a draft report "Science Vision for European Astronomy" and has invited
comments on the draft. Chapter 5 of the report includes some references
to space weather, so may I encourage you to comment on that part of the
report. The report is available on the Astronet web site at:
http://www.astronet-eu.org/IMG/pdf/report_svwg_3.pdf
and comments can be submitted via a web forum at
http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/sciencevision/
or to members of the appropriate Astronet working groups (see their web
site). Comments need to be submitted by about 19th January to feed into
an Astronet workshop in the following week.
I will draft and circulate a formal response from SWWT - if there are
issues that you would like me to include, please let me know as soon as
possible. My thoughts are to raise awareness in Astronet that there are
parallel European activities with much more comprehensive coverage of
space weather and to encourage Astronet to build cross-links with those
activities.
2. You may have seen recent news items about NASA's Moon initiative
("Global Exploration Strategy"). This has much potential for space
weather activities. For example, space weather projects appear in NASA's
180 reasons to go to the Moon
(http://www.nasa.gov/xls/163559main_LunarExplorationObjectives.xls).Ther
e is also an excellent discussion at http://lunarhps.blogspot.com/. If
you are interested, may I encourage you to establish contact with any
national discussions on the Moon initiative, raise awareness of role of
space weather and feed back news to SWWT? I anticipate that national and
European discussions will proceed quickly in the New Year, so we need to
move quickly to take advantage of this opportunity.
Best regards,
Mike Hapgood
Chair, SWWT
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Mike Hapgood Tel: +44 1235 44 6520
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Mob: +44 789 9908 780
Chilton Fax: +44 1235 44 5848
DIDCOT
Oxfordshire OX11 0QX Email: [log in to unmask]
United Kingdom
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