ESA Brainstorming on Astrobiology

A pilot for a series of open, focused, and multidisciplinary workshops

Overview

What? An open, focused, and multidisciplinary European Space Agency (ESA) workshop on astrobiology, featuring expert discussion as well as public talks.
Who? Uniting ~30 experts from ESA and the science community, including exoplanets, planetary science, and solar/stellar physics
When? 16 - 20 October 2023
Where? The European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), Keplerlaan 1, 2201 AZ Noordwijk, The Netherlands
Why? Fostering collaboration, connecting ESA with the Zeitgeist of the rapidly growing astrobiology community, brainstorming outside-of-the-box ideas for interdisciplinary science and future missions, and disseminating our findings via public lectures and a publication. Our vision is to form a diverse group in terms of research expertise, gender, seniority, background, institute country, and professional functionality.

Importantly, there is some commitment requested before and after the event (see below); we will select ~15 applicants from the community; travel grants for all participants will be provided (up to 1000 Euro; exceptions may be discussed upon request); and the deadline for submissions is 15 June 2023. Succesful applicants will be contacted and invited shortly after the deadline.

Topical Themes

The topical themes we will address are ESA- as well as science-community-driven: 

•  Astrobiology in the frame of Voyage 2050 
•  Optimizing synergies between ESA missions and ground-based facilities for astrobiology 
•  Seeking astrobiology synergies with other space agencies 
•  Unresolved, fundamental astrobiology research questions which require new space-based missions

Preliminary Programme

* Keynote talks by 1-2 selected, experienced presenters to summarise the field. These talks will be live-streamed to the entire ESA Science Faculty and stakeholder community, recorded, and made available on our workshop website.
** Topical, shared talks by groups of 2-4 participants under a common idea. The participants will be put in contact with each other several months before the event to coordinate and curate a shared presentation.

Speaker Commitment

Please note that this is designed to be an interactive workshop with deliverables. We thus expect a certain amount of effort before (e.g., coordinating talks between various speakers for the shared sessions) and after (e.g., contributing to writing a "white paper" style summary addressing the topical themes) the event. This will, of course, not be too much - but the more everyone puts in, the more everyone gets out. 

Local Information

All in-person attendees are invited to ESTEC (Keplerlaan 1, 2201 AZ Noordwijk, The Netherlands) for the whole week. More local information will be provided in due course.

Contact & Organising Committee

Please contact esa-brainstorming@cosmos.esa.int or any individual member with any and all questions, and we will be happy to help. The organising committee is, in alphabetical order:

Nicol Caplin¹
Quentin Changeat³
Salma Fahmy¹
Maximilian N. Günther¹ (Chair)
Laura Hayes¹
Ana Heras¹
Gaitee Hussain¹
Markus Kissler-Patig²
Theresa Lüftinger¹
Bruno Merín²
Emily Rickman³
Elliot Sefton-Nash¹
Jorge Vago¹
Olivier Witasse¹

¹ESTEC, ²ESAC, ³STScI

Apply here (Deadline 15 June 2023)

Links

Link to the event privacy notice

Link to the event recording notice

Link to the code of conduct

link to the WebEx etiquette