Our Space Environment ─ Opportunities, Stakes, and Dangers

This book explores the opportunities, the potential and the hazards of Earth's immediate space environment. It covers the physical characteristics of this portion of space, the influence of deeper space, observing and forcasting tools, the problem of space debris, the evolution of satellites, the different orbits and their uses, Earth's place in the solar system and its influence on climate and weather, the sun and its action on our planet, asteroid and comets and the means to detect them, laws and regulations, the political actors and role of nations.

Claude Nicollier: Born in Vevey, Switzerland, in 1944, he is a Professor in aerospace engineering at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. He graduated from the University of Lausanne in 1970 (Bachelor of Science in physics) and the University of Geneva in 1975 (Master of Science in astrophysics). He also graduated as a Swiss Air Force pilot in 1966, in airline pilot in 1974 and a test pilot in 1988. He was a member of the first group of European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts selected in 1978. He was then detached to the NASA Johnson Space Center In Houston, Texas, to train as a crewmember for Space Shuttle missions. He was assigned as a Mission Specialist on four Space Shuttle flights, including the first and the third missions to service the Hubble Space Telescope on orbit. He spent more than 1000 hours in space, and performed a spacewalk on this last mission in December 1999 to install new equipment on the orbiting observatory.

Roger-Maurice Bonnet: During his long tenure at the European Space Agency, Dr Bonnet has directed the launch of 17 artificial scientific satellites, initiating the development of the Huygens probe placed on the NASA Cassini Saturn Orbiter which landed on Titan on 14 January 2005, developing the successful Mars Express mission and directing the SMART-1 European lunar mission. He is President of COSPAR and Executive Director of ISSI and has acquired a world reputation in the field of space politics.

Werner Schmutz: Born in 1952), he is the current director of the Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos and World Radiation Center (PMOD/WRC) and has held the position since 1999. Graduating at ETH Zurich in 1979, Schmutz began is scientific career at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich and received his PhD in 1985. He moved to Kiel, Germany and to Boulder, Colorado, for post doctoral positions and returned to ETH Zurich as senior scientist. He was elected honorary Professor of ETH Zurich in 2002. Werner Schmutz is PI of several space experiments measuring solar irradiance on ESA and French satellites and he is co-PI of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager experiment on ESA's solar Orbiter mission. He is president of the Swiss Commission on Space Research and Swiss delegate to COSPAR. He is also president of the International Radiation Commission of IAMAS, and member of the Consultative Committee for Photometry and Radiometry.

Thomas Schildknecht: He is a member of the Division A Fundamental Astronomy and a member of Division A Commission 8 Astrometry. He is also the president of the National Committee for Astronomy in Switzerland.

Daniel Neuenschwander: He has been the head of the Swiss Space Office and of the delegation to ESA since July 2009. In his function he chairs a number of national and international bodies, including the board of directors of the Swiss Space Center. A licensed airline pilot and holder of a degree in physical geography from the University of Freiburg, he also attended a higher education business program at the HEC in Paris. Up until 2001, Daniel Neuenschwander focused his professional activities on aviation. In 2002, he joined the space sector and held from mid-2006 to mid-2009 the position of permanent delegate to the European Space Agency (ESA).