ISWI Newsletter - Vol.2 No.13
20 February 2010

Attached are two documents that come from the recent COPUOS gathering in Vienna (47^th session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee).

In my opinion, one slide that is particularly important is Page 6 (of 12 pages) of the second pdf (by Messrs. Davila and Gopalswamy). It lists the "key principles" of the ISWI Instrument Program. What is more, on the next page (Page 7), there is a fine list of instrument providers (in red letters) and instrument hosts (in green letters).

When it is asked by neophytes, "What is the purpose of ISWI? Why is it needed? What can it possibly amount to?" --- the reply is that IHY/ISWI partially resolves the hitherto unresolved problem of how to get scientifically significant instruments deployed in regions of the world where they are *needed* but (for one reason or another) could not get there.

In this respect, ISWI is a beaucoup formidable "barrier buster" (or "match maker") and I challenge anyone to come up with a better way to resolve this long-standing problem (i.e., making the links between instrument providers and instrument hosts for the benefit of space science).

To wrap up, my retort to the neophytes in the peanut gallery is:----> "We have an agenda and so do not get in our way."

(1) Informal summary of the deliberations of the 47th session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of UNCOPUOS, 8-19 Feb 2010.
(Background of UNCOPUOS outlined in the previous issue of this newsletter.); 3 pages, 23 KB in size. (click )

(2) "International Space Weather Initiative",
by Dr. Joseph M. Davila and Dr. Nat Gopalswamy,
Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, Greenbelt, Maryland, 20771, USA; 12 pages, 680 KB (click )

If you want to read the original newsletter, click here