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AOGS Election of Office Bearers - 2012 to 2014
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S.A. Haider (CV)
Professor
Space & Atmospheric Science Division, Physical Research Laboratory
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Planetary science is a major interdisciplinary field combining aspects of Astronomy/Astrophysics with Geology/Geophysics, Meteorology/Atmospheric Sciences and Space Science/Plasma Physics. Several missions like Cassini, Mars Express, Venus Express, New Horizon and Messenger are moving around the planets and others Mars Next, ExoMars and Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) will be launched in next few years. Coming years will also witness a tremendous growth in Asia-Oceania region with the upcoming missions to Moon (Chandrayaan 2) by India and Mars (Mars Exploration with Lander and Orbiter (MELOS) and Yinghuo1 aboard Phobos-Grunt) by Japan and China. The objectives of these missions are to address key science of geophysics, atmosphere, ionosphere, magnetosphere, solar wind interaction and escape to outer space of planets. Further ground based observations of planetary bodies are continuously on rise and modeling becomes an important tool to understand physical, chemical and dynamical processes of planetary sciences.
In view of above the Planetary Science (PS) section of AOGS has to play a greater responsibility in future. There is a need for making the PS sessions more coherent and broader to meet the requirements of a larger PS community by adding few new research areas into PS session like Geology, Astrobiology, Meteorology and Habitability on planets. This will expand AOGS by attracting scientists from different fields and would benefit AOGS attendees in general and the PS community in particular.
The past president and conveners of the PS sections have done very hard work for making PS sessions most successful in AOGS. During the past year PS section contributed about 30% of the total number of abstracts presented at AOGS annual meetings. I wish to maintain/or increase this percentage and would like to make PS sessions more attractive and beneficial to the PS community.
Planetary science is very important in Asia and Oceania, where we have a variety of natural phenomena that wait to be understood for both scientific and societal reasons. The research in planetary science is receiving a great attention nowadays. I am sure that PS section of AOGS will achieve a larger growth in next couple of years and I will do best to fulfill its requirement.
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