›Planning for a joint scientific space mission

The goal is to jointly define this mission through cooperation between the European and Chinese scientific communities. Activities will follow a collaborative approach through all the phases of the mission: study, definition, implementation, operations and scientific exploitation.

ESA and CAS have agreed that the first step in this process is to promote interactions between Chinese and European scientists who are interesting in responding to a joint Call for proposals for such a mission.

For this reason ESA and CAS are organising two workshops, one in China and one in Europe, separated by approximately 6 months.

The 1st Workshop will be hosted in Chengdu (China) on 25-26 February 2014. The goals of this workshop are to:

• Allow European and Chinese scientists to present ideas for cooperative missions, paving the way for potential partnerships.
• Provide to the community preliminary guidelines on the technical and programmatic constraints that need to be considered by potential proposers.

After the first workshop, European and Chinese scientists will be encouraged to team together, looking for shared interests towards a joint mission proposal.

The second workshop, to be organised in Europe in the 3rd quarter of 2014, will focus on:

• Presentations preferentially by joint European and Chinese teams on specific scientific objectives and preliminary mission concepts to fulfil these objectives. These will allow ideas for potential joint missions to be further elaborated and scientific cooperation to be extended.
• Providing more detailed information on the technical and programmatic requirements that need to be fulfilled by the proposed missions and about the terms, conditions and planning for the forthcoming Call.