KO Splinter

The splinter meeting took place on Wednesday (2008.11.19) afternoon. The coordinator provided an overview of the project and each WP leader provided a overview of the activities of each WP. The coordinator concluded presenting the outreach activities of the Soteria network inviting all attendees at the upcoming meetings of Soteria and of conferences where Soteria is prominently present. A special meeting was made of the upcoming Space Climate Symposium and School in March 15-18 where Soteria will meet again:

http://spaceweb.oulu.fi/spaceclimate/

The audience included a very good fraction of people not belonging to Soteria, thereby providing a very successful outreach event.

From the audience, a question was posed as to the relationship between Soteria and the possible upcoming Space Situational Awareness (SSA) initiative of ESA. While we all wait for the ESA ministerial of next week, the Coordinator and Volker Bothmer clarified to the audience that while at the time of writing the proposal ESA's SSA was not yet a publicly discussed project and was therefore not yet considered, Soteria will concentrate on achieving the best possible synergies with SSA as well as with SWENET and other existing ESA projects and other European and international space weather related collaborative activities. The audience further asked if financial interference was expected between Soteria and SSA. The answer is essentially no, as SSA is funded by ESA and Soteria by the EC. However, any opportunities for synergies were promised to be taken.

The splinter was wrapped up with a group picture of the Soterians in attendance. The photo is available by going in the section Pictures of the Soteria web site: Pictures