1 Oct
2018

#IAC2018 kicks off in Spacecity Bremen

Posted by in OeWF News.
#IAC2018 kicks off in Spacecity Bremen

The 69th edition of the International Astronautical Congress kicked-off today in Bremen with a very beautiful opening ceremony at the ÖVB Arena in Bremen. The Kammerphilharmonie Bremen did an amazing job playing Beethoven’s 5th and incorporating sounds & visuals from space. Also, their adaption of the German “Major Tom – völlig losgelöst” was extraordinary.

Opening ceremony

Opening ceremony with Kammerphilharmonie Bremen

Opening ceremony

Opening ceremony with Kammerphilharmonie Bremen

This year’s congress reached a new record in attendee – about 6,200 – and will have over 2,000 lectures. Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the IAF, is certain that the congress will have 10,000 participants in the near future & challenges the organizers of the IAC2019 which will take place in Washington D.C.

Pascale Ehrenfreund, IAF vice-president is very happy that about half of the attendees are under 35 years. Education & the next generation also played a big role in the opening ceremony.

That Bremen is a true space city was pointed out by Bremen’s Mayor Carsten Sieling. There are over 140 companies with about 12,000 employees in the aerospace sector in Bremen.

After the opening ceremony there was some time to explore the space exhibition. Of course, you ran into many familiar faces and OeWF members.  At the exhibition there are many space models likes a 1:1 Hayabusa model, Exo-Rovers, Orion capsule on display. All major space agencies as well as the just newly established Australian Space Agency have a boot there as well.

Hayabusa-2 1:1 model

Hayabusa-2 1:1 model

IAC2018 Bremen, Sophie Gruber next to Orion module model

OeWF board member Sophie Gruber next to the an Orion model

 

With the traditional heads of agency panel, the afternoon started.  The panelists were: Jan Wörner (ESA),  K. Sivan (ISRO), Zhang Kejian (China National Space Administration), Hiroshi Yamakawa (JAXA), Dimitris Loskutov (Roscosmos), Sylvain Laport (CSA), Jim Bridenstein (NASA)

Heads of Agencies panel

Heads of Agencies panel

This year’s IAC motto #InvolvingEveryone was incorporated in all talks of the heads of agency. All of them said, that they are open for international cooperation. Nevertheless, in reality there could be more cooperation between the space agencies.

Going back to the Moon was a big topic in Jim Bridenstine’s talk “We want it a permanent command module in orbit around the moon & we want to have this architecture open.  And to stay there.” ESA’s moon village was of course mentioned by ESA DG Jan Wörner, he pointed out that the moon village concept is more a gateway concept, it’s about going forward to the Moon. China stressed out that they plan to land this year a rover in 2019 on the far side of the Moon and that they would love to cooperation internationally also with their Moon missions.

In the afternoon 20 session ran in parallel. I followed most of the time the Space Exploration Overview session with gave a good overview over the current strategic exploration goals. In most the talks Moon and Mars were involved.

The Global Exploration Roadmap, which is now in it’s 3rd edition (updated Feb 2018) is also a human exploration roadmap. Mars is a horizon destination but not the last destination. The Moon is a near term global with strong focus on science, as a training platform for Mars but it could be used also as exit strategy.  In the roadmap no permanent presence on the Moon is included. The roadmap servers as a tool to help agencies collaboratively prepare for future Human space exploration and can be downloaded here: http://www.globalspaceexploration.org/

Also the NASA Mars capability study team investigated the Moon as stepping stone to human Mars missions and classified 4 different human lunar activities: A Gateway only, an Apollo-class short mission, a global exploration roadmap approach and a lunar base. The conclusion of the authors was: “A human return to the Moon can, if done correctly, serve as an excellent down payment to Mars”

In the late afternoon Airbus also announced a new competition: TheMoonRace.org which is supported also by ESA DG Jan Wörner. During the press conference it was not totally clear, what this new moon race is about. But check out their website and see for yourself.

 

For more updates on the ongoing IAC follow our OeWF Twitter account.

Author: Olivia Haider

 

 

 

 

 

 

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