The scientific support of five ESA projects has played a central role in the Division's activities. Ulysses passed another important milestone in 1995 when the spacecraft completed its prime mission with the exploration of the second (northern) polar region of the Sun and provided a wealth of new results on the latitude dependence of heliospheric properties at a period close to solar minimum. Ulysses is now in its 'Second Solar Orbit', which will bring it back to the polar regions at the next solar maximum. For Ulysses, the Division provides the functions of both the Project Scientist and Project Manager. Major advances were made in the development of the ESA Archive for Ulysses data and the flow of data into this public database in SSD.
The two elements of the Solar-Terrestrial Science Programme (STSP), SOHO and Cluster, which evolved along parallel development paths up to their launches, found themselves in two totally different situations at the end of 1996. SOHO, launched on 2 December 1995, is fully into its first year of science and has taken world centre stage in solar physics. The Project Scientist Team at GSFC, in close cooperation with the Principal Investigator (PI) Teams and NASA colleagues, planned the SOHO commissioning and now plays a central role in coordinating SOHO science operations, supporting Joint Observing Programmes (JOPs), maintaining a well-frequented Web page and supporting the development of the SOHO archives at GSFC and in Europe. Following initial close cooperation with the ESA project development team up to the end of the spacecraft commissioning phase, SSD staff took responsibility for the mission on ESA's side in mid-April 1996.
The four Cluster spacecraft, on the other hand, became the victim of the ill-fated Ariane 501 launch on 4 June 1996. The Project Scientist and his associate had invested tremendous pre- launch efforts in the science operations of the four spacecraft mission (e.g. Cluster Science Data System, Joint Science Operations Centre, commissioning plan, master science plan). Following the loss of the mission, they were instrumental, together with the Cluster Science Working Team, in preparing the Phoenix (Cluster spare) project for SPC approval in July and the Cluster II recovery mission for conditional endorsement by a large SPC majority in November. A final decision on Cluster II by SPC is expected to be taken in February 1997.
Divisional staff scientists, including the Cluster, SOHO and Ulysses Project Scientists, have supported the work of the Inter- Agency Consultative Group for Space Science (IACG) through its Working Groups and the implementation of campaigns. Results of campaigns III and IV will be the subject of the September 1997 ESLAB Symposium on Correlated Phenomena at the Sun, in the Heliosphere and in Geospace.
The Cassini-Huygens mission, to be launched in October 1997, continued to place a heavy burden on the Huygens Project Scientist. Besides dealing with many science issues related to Titan, interfacing with the Huygens investigator teams and monitoring the Probe development, he has had to represent the interests of the large European Cassini community vis-à-vis the Cassini project and to follow its development in the USA.
A major evolution took place in the International Rosetta Mission, the third Cornerstone of ESA's Horizon 2000 Programme. Following the selection of the payloads for the Orbiter and two Surface Science Packages (SSPs) for the Science Verification Phase in December 1995, the Project Scientist supported the Project in experiment progress meetings with all 12 Orbiter PI teams, interacted with the SSP suppliers and was involved in numerous activities related to the difficulties of payload funding. An additional load was the 'turbulent' slimming down of the SSPs to one single European Lander. With the arrival of the first Rosetta supernumerary in late 1996, the Project Scientist now has an additional pair of shoulders with which to support the workload.
A CD-ROM containing the data archive for the Giotto Extended Mission (GEM) has been completed by the Primitive Bodies Node of the Planetary Data System (PDS). In addition to the data from the flight experiments, it contains supplementary ground-based observations. The CD-ROM, officially produced by ESA, will become available to the wide scientific community by mid-1997.
Studies of potential future solar system and fundamental physics missions drew heavily on the scientific manpower of the Division until the presentation in April 1996 of the Phase A studies for the M3 mission slot. Members of the Division were Study Scientists for three of the five candidate missions: Intermarsnet, MORO and STEP. In addition, scientific advice was given to ESA lunar studies, in particular to LEDA (Lunar European Demonstration Approach), conducted by the Technical Directorate of ESA. Divisional scientists also provided scientific support to two of the recommended Cornerstone-level missions of 'Horizon 2000 Plus': the Mission to Mercury and the programme to observe gravitational waves (LISA).
The Division continued to produce the 6-monthly newsletter Solar System News. This publication certainly helped to improve the awareness in the community of opportunities for young scientists in solar system science in ESA, as demonstrated by the number of enquiries about research positions. In addition, members of the Division provided scientific advice to the ESA Technology Research Programme (TRP), the Directorate of Manned Spaceflight, provided input to ESA's Report to COSPAR (1996), organised symposia or special sessions on various topics at international conferences (e.g. COSPAR, EGS, AGU) and supported numerous other ESA activities.
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