Joint DPS-EPSC Meeting kicks off in Pasadena, California
More than 1,200 astronomers and planetary scientists from the United States, Europe, and worldwide started congregating today in Pasadena, California for one of the largest planetary science meetings in the world.
The joint 48th meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) and 11th European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) in Pasadena, California, is second time DPS and EPSC have been held together but the first time that EPSC has been held outside Europe. The goal of this joint meeting is to strengthen international scientific collaboration in all areas of planetary science – a core objective of Europlanet, which is the parent organisation of EPSC.
We are looking forward to an exciting week discussing the latest results in planetary science!
Leading European researchers will be giving plenary talks including:
- Michael Toplis from CNRS-IRAP in France and Cristina De Sanctis from INAF in Italy, who will be discussing results from the Dawn mission at the dwarf planet, Ceres;
- Leigh Fletcher from the University of Leicester, who will give the Urey Prize Lecture on Exploring Atmospheric Cycles on the Giant Planets.
- Sanjeev Gupta from Imperial College London, who will be talking about Mars Science Laboratory mission highlights and what they tell us about Mars Habitability
- Matt Taylor, who will be presenting highlights from Rosetta – although the mission has ended, the scientific analysis of results goes on.
There are multiple parallel sessions too, as well as press briefings on results from Rosetta, Venus Express Cassini, New Horizons, MAVEN, Juno and the search for planet nine. We will also be streaming ESA’s live coverage of the ExoMars TGO orbit insertion and Schiaparelli landing, with comments from ESA’s Olivier Witasse and the PI of TGO’s NOMAD instrument, Ann Carine Vandaele during our Wednesday press briefing at 12 noon.
Look out on Twitter for updates during the week and on our press page for all the news releases from the conference.
