Moscow, 27 April 2010 
For immediate release

PRESS RELEASE
Scientific Aspects of Space Debris Problem discussed in Moscow

The International Science and Technology Center (ISTC) together with ROSCOSMOS organized a thematic workshop on 26-27 April 2010 on «Space Debris Mitigation» in order to discuss future cooperation and collaboration in space safety. 

A key note speech was given by cosmonaut Sergey Avdeev who recognized ISTC as a useful vehicle for international cooperation and expressed his support to discussion on the issue of space debris in the framework of the international ISTC workshop. He called for more direct actions to tackle the increasing problem of space debris.

ISTC Executive Director, Adriaan van der Meer (left) offers a crystal globe to Russian Cosmonaut Sergey Avdeev (right)

The Workshop, hosted by the ISTC in Moscow, Russia, provided an international platform for presentations and discussions of the current state of the space debris problem as well as possible technical ways to solve this problem to allow future safe space exploration. The Workshop focused on long size man-made debris such as launcher elements, spacecrafts, payloads and other components. 

The Program Committee selected 22 papers for oral presentations and 2 for poster presentations.
In total 47 experts from more than 31 scientific institutes and space related companies took part in the Workshop. Participants from Brazil, the European Union, Japan, the Russian Federation and the United States attended the event. Various papers were presented on behalf of international teams of researchers.
Prospects and challenges for research, currently conducted and planned in the EU, Japan, the Russian Federation and the USA were discussed and various approaches and technologies for decreasing space debris were presented. 
The Workshop presentations related to an overview of the problem, describing concepts, procedures and experiments related to space debris mitigation, delineating approaches, schemes and developments of means/vehicles for debris removal from near-Earth space, as well as propulsion installations for debris removal from near-Earth space. Some participants called for more action in this field. 

During the introduction of the workshop, the ISTC Executive Director mentioned the ISTC funded projects related to space debris problem. In the particular field of aerospace, ISTC has funded more than 100 projects with a total value of 30 million USD. These projects cover a wide range of areas such as aeronautics, manned and unmanned spacecraft, space safety, extraterrestrial exploration, spacecraft trajectories and many others including the space debris problem. 95 of these projects were implemented at 87 Russian institutes and 8 at other CIS institutes. 

The proceedings of the Workshop will be published soon as a way to further increase awareness of the problem of large size man made debris in view of the future pursuit of safe space exploration. 

Note for the editor:
More information on the Workshop can be obtained from Sebastian Dakin, ISTC Moscow, e-mail address: dakin@istc.ru, or +7 (495) 982 32 64.


Read Adriaan van der Meer's welcome address (download)