Status of space science and planetary sciences in Uganda: Building it through synergies with Europe

Abstract

Space Science and Astrophysics are currently emerging fields in most African countries and in particular Uganda. These two fields are known to be channels of socioeconomic development and as such need to be developed further in the different African countries. For this to be achieved, there is need to deal with the challenges in doing astronomy or space science research on the African continent for instance access to state of the art computational and observational facilities. Creating synergies between European and African countries offers a gateway to advancing astronomy in Africa. In East Africa, and in particular Uganda, Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) is aiming at becoming a centre of excellence in Space Science and Astrophysics research. This has been possible through the funding from the Swedish International Development Agency through the International Science Programme at Uppsala University.I will briefly highlight the different projects going on at MUST in both Planetary and Space sciences. I will then focus on the results obtained in our study on “stellar activity as an important factor for planet habitability”. This study was carried out in collaboration with the Thueringer Landessternwarte-Tautenburg, Germany.