On Sept. 23-25, 2019, the International Forums for International Meridian Circle Program (IMCP) jointly organized by International Space Science Institute in Beijing (ISSI-BJ) and National Space Science Center (NSSC) was successfully held in Beijing. The forum attracts more than 30 participants from home and abroad with participants from world-renowned space agencies, organizations, institutes and universities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, Japan, Sweden, Belgium, Russia, Morocco, Nigeria and Burkina Faso, and the domestic participation comes from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan University, Peking University, University of Science and Technology of China, Shandong University, the Institute of Crustal Dynamics of China Earthquake Administration and the Polar Research Center etc.

 

The forum conveners include Prof. William Liu (NSSC, CAS, China), Prof. Michel Blanc (IRAP, CNRS-Université Toulouse III, France), Prof. Eric Donovan (University of Calgary, Canada), Prof. John C. Foster (MIT Haystack Observatory, USA), Prof. Mark Lester (University of Leicester, UK), and Prof. Maurizio Falanga (ISSI-BJ).  Prof. Alvaro GIMéNEZ, former Director of Science of the European Space Agency (ESA), delivered the welcome speech on behalf of ISSI-BJ.

 

25 invited presentations were scheduled during the two-and-a-half-day forum. Scientists, cutting across different disciplines, discussed intensively the key scientific issues, the frontiers and challenges of the International Meridian Circle Program which provided insights and perspectives for the future development of IMCP. The successful forum lays a solid foundation for the subsequent development of the IMCP.