image: BepiColombo Approaching Mercury
Credit: Spacecraft: ESA/ATG medialab; Mercury: NASA/JPL
The 2024 Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC2024) is taking place this week in hybrid format at the Henry Ford Building of the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and online.
EPSC2024 covers the full spectrum of planetary research and technology across more than 60 scientific sessions. More than 1200 oral and poster presentations have been submitted and around 1200 planetary scientists from Europe and around the world are attending the conference. Media representatives are cordially invited to attend EPSC2024. Media registration is free. Any bona fide media delegates can register by e-mailing aheward@europlanet-society.org.
Press Briefing, Friday, 13 September 2024
A press briefing will be held on Friday, 13 September at the Henry Ford Building of the Freie Universität Berlin and online. The briefing will cover two topics, with the following programme:
12:00 CEST: Welcome
Anita Heward, Press Officer, EPSC2024
12:05 CEST: ESA Hera Mission: One Month Before Launch
In just under one month, ESA’s Hera mission will set off to make a detailed post-impact survey of the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, which was impacted by NASA’s DART mission on 26 September 2022. Representatives of the Hera team will discuss expectations, current status and future plans for the mission, and summarise results from data extracted from DART to date.
Speakers:
- Michael Küppers, ESA Hera Project Scientist, ESA-ESAC, Spain
- Patrick Michel, Hera Mission Principal Investigator, DART Investigation Team, Director of Research at CNRS, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, France.
12:30 CEST: Updates on the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo Mission to Mercury: The Closest Flyby of a Planet Ever
Following the successful flyby of Mercury by the joint ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission on 4 September 2024, members of the mission and science team will present an update on the latest rendezvous, plans for the remainder of the mission, as well as results from previous flybys.
Speakers:
- Johannes Benkhoff and Geraint Jones, ESA BepiColombo Project Scientists, ESA-ESTEC, Netherlands
- Ignacio Clérigo, BepiColombo Spacecraft Operations Manager, ESA-ESOC, Germany
- Prof Yasumasa Kasaba, Tohoku University, Japan and PI of PWI instrument on the JAXA spacecraft Mio
- Note: Additional speakers may join. The final line up will be published here.
To attend press briefings in-person, please make sure that you have received a TAN code waiver and registered as media for EPSC2024 by emailing aheward@europlanet-society.org. To attend online, please follow the Zoom registration link below and you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the live stream.
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__aVMtry8SPmI67ee7ALnMQ
Further information
Details of all scientific sessions and presentation abstracts for EPSC2024 can be found at the official website: https://www.epsc2024.eu/
An overview of the programme can be found here:
https://www.epsc2024.eu/epsc2024-session-overview.pdf
The meeting hashtag is #EPSC2024