Annual Meeting of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group

November 1–3, 2016
Columbia, Maryland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One hundred forty-seven people (132 professional and 15 students) attended the 2016 Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) meeting held at the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) Headquarters in Columbia, Maryland.

LEAG is trying to grow the number of students who attend the annual LEAG meetings, and toward this end has instituted the LEAG Bernard Ray Hawke Next Lunar Generation Career Development Awards, sponsored by the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI).

The 2016 meeting was designed to address three goals:

  • Integrate the perspectives and interests of the different stakeholders (science, engineering, government, and private sector) to explore common goals of lunar exploration.
  • Use the results of recent and ongoing missions to examine how science enables exploration and exploration enables science.
  • Provide a forum for community updates and input into the issues that affect lunar science and exploration.

Sessions created to explore these goals were focused upon Commercial Space Opportunities (Impact on Lunar Science and Exploration), New Views of the Lunar Regolith, New Lunar Mission Concepts, the Lunar Capabilities Roadmap, and Building a Moon Village. There was strong participation from space agencies (NASA, ESA, KARI, JAXA, etc.) and from international lunar scientists. Moon Express kindly sponsored the reception and poster session on November 2, during which Congressman Jim Bridenstine (member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee) presented a very well received talk about how the Moon could be this generation’s “Sputnik moment” (https://bridenstine.house.gov/blog/?postid=758.

The meeting produced nine community findings (https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/leag2016/Meeting-Findings.pdf) that were forwarded to specific entities, and updates on how these have been addressed were presented at the 2017 LEAG meeting in October.

For more information about the meeting, including the complete program and abstracts, visit the meeting website at https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/leag2016/.