COSPAR Capacity Building and Small Satellites

The Capacity Building Programme (CBP) is considered today one of the flagships of COSPAR (COmmittee for SPAce Research) activities. The Programme started in 2001 as a tentative project designed to widen expertise in space sciences and promote the use of data archives from space missions in developing countries, as a way to foster in those regions of the world first quality scientific activities. In these last 19 years we have held 35 workshops with more than 1000 participants in 21 countries, covering practically all space science disciplines (Astronomy, Earth Observation, Solar Physics, Planetary Sciences, Ionosphere, Magnetosphere, even Planetary Crystallography). Target of the highly practical COSPAR workshops are advanced students (PhD level) and young researchers.

The advent of a new era of unique explorations in space sciences using small satellites opens new challenges and possibilities for developing countries. There is a need to raise awareness of their potential in those regions and to form scientists and engineers at all related levels from observational techniques to mission concept design.

The achieved experience by the CBP could surely help in establishing a related program, although we think that a new type of workshops is needed hereby, due to a somewhat different target (final year or even younger science / engineering students) but also due to the multi-disciplinary type of work associated with small satellites. The interest of local industry in developing countries is another distinctive element of such a program, opening different funding ways than the traditional ones followed so far.

We aim to discuss several related questions to the establishment of a new type of COSPAR workshops, devoted to Small Satellites, also in the light of the CB workshop held in the week previous to the Symposium.