THE ESA SCIENCE PROGRAM AT THE OPENING OF THE 21st CENTURY

摘要

I have tried to look into the future. Missions have form and content. If one looks at the content, we can see a prediction horizon more or less in 2015: too many new results are forthcoming to allow for a reasonable planning beyond that date. Some more can be said about the form, although what I am going to say is more based on faith on human reason than on extrapolation of present trends. First of all, space science should be pursued as a global effort, with a universal evolving program, in which all space faring agencies will make harmonized plans, each one taking the leadership in some areas (in proportion to the means and competence), without ever excluding other agencies from partnership and access to data. Hopefully we will not hear anymore the words "ESA mission" or "NASA mission", but rather, "ESA-lead mission" or "NASA-lead" etc. Also, the system should immediately react with solidarity, were a mission lost due to some accident. Secondly, the missions will be always "better". They will be products of better quality, based on better technologies, providing better science and at the same time a better "science for money" value. Thirdly, the missions will be of all sizes, the size being dictated by the objectives. Fourthly, new sources of funding will be tapped. Resorting to private sponsorship might be a way out, but potentially dangerous and difficult to control, because in the end science missions could be selected on the basis of their PR content. This might well be a disaster, but there is an important tool to avoid it, that is, the education of the public at large, which is in itself an exciting field of research. This is clearly a way forward to the future and a way to embrace the fantastic challenge which we face in pursuing our quest of the unknown and in exploring the hidden and yet invisible Universe.