Blue Dots

First announcement

Dear colleague,

This message is sent to you because of your interest in the search and characterization of exoearths.

As you probably know, no proposal with such an objective has been selected by ESA for its current round of Cosmic Vision assessment studies. A meeting was held at IAS Orsay last month to draw the conclusions from this process and I was designated to set up and coordinate a committee to drive and promote the project within a wider community than the traditional Darwin base.

The current plan is therefore to constitute a Blue Dots Team (BDT for short) whose objective is to prepare a roadmap towards the detection and characterization of habitable telluric exoplanets. The scope of the BDT is science oriented and not restricted to a particular detection technique, and some networking activity will be needed to integrate the perspectives from different communities. The goal is to establish a consensus around this roadmap during a conference to be held in 2009. Projects issued from this roadmap would then be well positionned in the future competitions of our space (and possibly ground) agencies.

So, please let me know (by February 15th) if you are interested into participating to the work of the Blue Dots Team, and what your contribution might be. Also feel free to suggest someone who might not be on this distribution list. For better efficiency, I would like to limit the size of the BDT to 15 people, striking as much as possible a thematic (and geographic) balance. However, this will be completed by a wider range of external experts if needed. Please note that at the moment, there are no specific funds to support the activities of the BDT, although we will address this issue as soon as we are constituted into a team.

Best regards,

Vincent Coudé du Foresto

Friday 18 January 2008 by Vincent Coudé du Foresto