Top scientists from around the world will gather in Nicosia to decide the future of Mars space missions.
The International Space Summit is organized by the Cyprus Space Exploration Organisation (CSEO) as part of its ongoing efforts to develop the sector on the island.
The summit will be attended by top-level scientists, such as the Chief Scientist of NASA James Green, the Director of Space Research Institute of Russia, the Minister of State of Advanced Sciences of the UAE, and other top officials and scientists from Europe, India and China.
This International Space Summit will take place on October 15-19. During their meetings in Cyprus, the scientists will discuss and decide the future of Mars space missions as well as international cooperation.
"We welcome our high-level guests in Nicosia and this is a great honour for the Municipality of Nicosia. The gathering of such great personalities who are playing a major role in space exploration makes us particularly proud,” the Mayor of Nicosia Constantinos Yiorkadjis told CNA.
President of CSEO George Danos said: “Our Organization has worked for years to put Cyprus dynamically in the space sector and these efforts are yielding results in the best possible way.”
He added that the conference will discuss international co-operation for future exploration missions to Mars.
Nicosia will also host many of the new players in Mars atmospheric research.
The seminar in Cyprus intends to export a winning concept of multi-instrument multi-mission collaboration at Earth to another planet and use the Mars Upper Atmosphere Network MUAN work-form to enable that.
Marcello Coradini, a renowned top ESA/NASA scientist said that Mars “is the ultimate goal, the only planet in our solar system where we can imagine humanity creating a new society”.
He said the objective to get humans to Mars will not be easy.
“There is a lot of preparation to do, maybe the moon can be a stepping stone, testing some technologies, landing on asteroids, and mining asteroids can be another stepping stone. Mars is the ultimate goal, it is the planet that resembles the earth and it is the only planet in the solar system that we could imagine human beings settling again and creating a new society.”
