A vision for space science

Abstract

The effort made in 2004/2005 by the European Space Science community to bring about the Cosmic Vision long-term programme set a standard to spacefaring Agencies for the third time in history. We think that the long-term space science programme of ESA is the only example of planned and formalized cooperation between a whole scientific community and an agency, in this case a multinational organization. It is easier said than done, but Europe did it, already three times. It is nice to think that there is now the chance to hand over to posterity, in printed form as a complement to the original ESA report, the present collection of 41 refereed papers. They are a representative sample of the 49 proposals originally submitted by the space science community, and on which the Cosmic Vision programme is based. The selection procedure for this volume was first of all related to the willingness of authors to actually put in scientific paper form their original proposals, secondly for them to accept the idea of rendering their work public and finally to enforce a particularly scrutinous refereeing process. However, this is only one part of the picture. Having participated (one of us as Chair of the ESA Space Science Advisory Committee) to the Cosmic Vision exercise, we would like to briefly outline here three other important elements, which were, and still are, at the heart of the programme. First of all, there is the idea itself of a long term programme, conceived from the start to be as binding as any plan can be. One does so consciously, in spite