LONDON, May 31: In an unprecedented move, 14 of the world's leading space agencies on Thursday revealed their agreed vision for globally coordinated space exploration to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
Following months of intensive discussions, they published their common ideas for space exploration: The Global Exploration Strategy: The Framework for Co-ordination.
The 14 space agencies that developed the document were: ASI (Italy); BNSC (UK); CNES (France); CNSA (China); CSA (Canada); CSIRO (Australia); DLR (Germany); ESA (European Space Agency); ISRO (India); JAXA (Japan); KARI (Republic of Korea); NASA (USA); NSAU (Ukraine); and, Roscosmos (Russia).
The document released by the UK government outlines the rationale for society to explore space, defines the current focus and process of space exploration, the current interest in returning to the Moon and exploring Mars, and proposes a framework for the future co-ordination of global space exploration.
Welcoming the publication of the document, UK’s Science and Innovation Minister Malcolm Wicks said: The document marks the start of a new era of space exploration. Since the launch of Sputnik in 1957, we have learnt much about how to explore space and have experienced the benefits of scientific discoveries in our everyday lives. Innovations such as exploiting space for global communications, weather forecasting and helping emergency services have all flowed from the first half-century of space exploration.
During this century we are sure to see some fantastic voyages of discovery as robots and humans venture further into our Solar System. What they learn will excite and inspire new generations to get involved in science and create new technology that could benefit the whole economy. Following publication of the document, it is expected that a voluntary, non-binding forum (the International Co-ordination Mechanism) will now be established so that all 14 nations can share their plans for space exploration, and collaborate to strengthen both individual projects and the collective effort.
The UK was heavily involved in the recent and highly successful SMART-1 mission to the Moon. It is building cutting edge technology to survey the geochemistry of the Moon aboard the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission which is due for blast off in 2008. It is also the second largest contributor to the European Space Agency's (ESA) Aurora space exploration programme. UK industry has recently started work on the BepiColombo mission to Mercury, a joint European/Japanese mission to be launched in 2013. The UK space sector is worth £4.8 billion per annum, supports 70,000 jobs and makes an overall contribution to UK GDP of almost £7 billion per annum.
