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IAC 2013 was a success

Czech Space Office gives the 64th International Astronautical Congress in Beijing positive evaluation

Prague, 3th October 2013 – The Czech Space Office has returned from the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Beijing and has had an intense week filled with meetings, promotion of Czech space and activities arising from membership in the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), in which the Director of the Czech Space Office holds the position of vice president.

64th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) organized by the International Astronautical Federation along with the China Organizing Committee took place from 23 to 27th September in the China National Convetion Center in Beijing, which is part of a modern complex built for the Olympic Games. IAC is the largest global astronautical event organized every year. Its main activity is the scientific conference where the issues and problems of more than 30 diverse topics aerospace and related industries are discussed. The second important part of the event is the accompanying exhibition, where the products and technologies are presented by a world-leading companies, which manufacture satellites and launch vehicles or their components and they can inform the space agencies, research institutes and universities here about their activities.

"Beijing hosted the IAC last Congress in 1996. Our expectation that China was going to prepare the Congress in grand style were fulfilled and in comparison with previous years, this year we rate as the best prepared Congress since 2010, when the conference was held in Prague where it was organised by  IAF in cooperation with Czech Space Office,"  says Jan Kolář, director of the CSO.

According to statistics, China has gained in comparison with previous congresses highest total number of registered visitors, which exceeded 3700 and thus exceeded the number of visitors of the Prague Congress. A quarter of the present experts proceeded from China, there was also a large number of delegates from the United States and Germany. Congress provided a unique opportunity for a meetings with representatives of Chinese organizations, companies and universities that participate in the Chinese space program. Acquired contacts opens the possibility of cooperation on student satellites, scientific instruments for satellites of Earth and planetary and lunar probes.

The second record of the Beijing Congress was more than 3600 posts submitted to the conference program, which were sent by experts from 73 countries and two thirds of them were accepted. "Among the posts there were several reports from Czech Republic, for example, lecture of Jan Hrabovský from University of Pardubice about the research of new chemical methods of the increase of the efficiency of photovoltaic cells in space, contributions of Pavel Pačes of Czech Technical University about  solar sensor testing to determine the spatial orientation of the spacecraft or posts of Ondřej Doule on design of spacecrafta and space stations, "explains Michal Václavík of CSO.

Czech representation has several committees and work groups under the International Astronautical Federation. In group for the support the involvement of small and developing countries into international space programmes were expanded the educational activities by the issue of deployment of developed technologies in an operational practice. Czech Space Office at IAF also participates in the preparation and organization of international training courses focused on management of space projects.

At the conference exhibition were a total of 83 exhibitors from 23 countries. It was obvils that China is interested particulary in the development of technologies and satellite systems and the services sector wasn´t represented as two former areas. The largem share had Chinese companies and agencies and there were present also the companies from the former Soviet Union.

"The new trend of the exhibition was the grouping of exhibiting companies into regional clusters. In contrast to the individual exhibitions, there was present a large booth of German Bremen, national booth of Belgium, Netherlands and really successful presentation pavilion of South Africa. Regional booths are relatively new on the congress exhibition and also it´s a demonstration of support of space activities in these countries," notes Michal Kuneš from the CSO.

Visitors of the Czech Space Office booth were particularly interested in the Czech scientific instruments and student projects. On Thursday there were a Czech hour organized by CSO with assistance of Czech embassy in Beijing and local Czech pub where were prepared traditional Czech meals with beer and national delicacies. Invitation to the event received over 100 guests including the astronauts.

"During the last day of the Congress it has been voted on the venue of the Congress IAC in 2016, in which prevailed Mexico over Ukraine. In 2014 the Congress IAC will be held in Toronto, Canada and the Czech Space Office is going tostart to prepare for it at the beggining of the next year. All interested parties which would like to present and promote their activities at next year's Congress IAC can turn to the Czech Space Office," says Kolar.