Germany and the Netherlands will organize a workshop on "Environmental future outlooks and their military implications" at the NBC School of the German Armed Forces in Sonthofen, Germany, from 9 -11 February. The event is organized under the umbrella of the NATO Science for Peace and Security Committee and with the participation of Allied Command Transformation (ACT).

For three days NATO experts as well as participants from Defence Ministries and other institutions will look at future environmental developments and trends and their direct implications for strategic military planning. The discussions will include findings of the "Multiple Futures Project 2030" that has been conducted by ACT in 2009 with the aim to enhance the Alliance's understanding of the complex new security challenges and its capacity to deal with threats across the full spectrum of conflicts.

While the consequences and implications of environmental changes for the tasks of the Armed Forces are currently being studied by individual nations, there has been little exchange of this knowledge among NATO Member and Partner countries until now.

Some of the objectives of the workshop are to establish a repository of available studies on the future environmental situation, compare the contents of the national studies, establish similarities and differences and create a network of experts and organizations.

The outcome of the discussions will serve as a basis for future long-term defence planning. They will also help to evaluate existing long term defence plans, influence concept and strategy development and improve training and threat analysis efforts, both on a national level as well as in the NATO context.

Source: NATO News

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HOUSTON - Nations around the world will join together to mark a milestone in space exploration this week, celebrating the 10th birthday of a unique research laboratory, the International Space Station.

Now the largest spacecraft ever built, the orbital assembly of the space station began with the launch from Kazakhstan of its first bus-sized component, Zarya, on Nov. 20, 1998. The launch began an international construction project of unprecedented complexity and sophistication.

The station is a venture of international cooperation among NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, and 11 members of the European Space Agency, or ESA: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. More than 100,000 people in space agencies and contractor facilities in 37 U.S. states and throughout the world are involved in this endeavor.

"The station's capability and sheer size today are truly amazing," said International Space Station Program Manager Mike Suffredini. "The tremendous technological achievement in orbit is matched only by the cooperation and perseverance of its partners on the ground. We have overcome differences in language, geography and engineering philosophies to succeed."

Only a few weeks after the U.S.-funded, Russian-built, Zarya module was launched from Kazakhstan, the space shuttle carried aloft the Unity connector module in December 1998. Constructed on opposite sides of Earth, Unity and Zarya met for the first time in space and were joined to begin the orbital station's assembly and a decade of peaceful cooperation.

Ten years later, the station's mass has expanded to more than 627,000 pounds, and its interior volume is more than 25,000 cubic feet, comparable to the size of a five-bedroom house. Since Zarya's launch as the early command, control and power module, there have been 29 additional construction flights to the station: 27 aboard the space shuttle and two additional Russian launches.

One hundred sixty seven individual representing 14 countries have visited the complex. Crews have eaten some 19,000 meals aboard the station since the first crew took up residence in 2000. Through the course of 114 spacewalks and unmatched robotic construction in space, the station's truss structure has grown to 291 feet long so far. Its solar arrays now span to 28,800 square feet, large enough to cover six basketball courts.

The International Space Station hosts 19 research facilities, including nine sponsored by NASA, eight by ESA and two by JAXA. Cooperation among international teams of humans and robots is expected to become a mainstay of space exploration throughout our solar system. The 2005 NASA Authorization Act recognized the U.S. orbital segment as the first national laboratory beyond Earth, opening it for additional research by other government agencies, academia and the private sector.

"With the International Space Station, we have learned so many things - and we're going to take that knowledge and apply it to flying to the moon and Mars," said Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke, now aboard the station. "Everything we're learning so close to home, only 240 miles away from the planet, we can apply to the moon 240,000 miles away."

To take a virtual tour of the International Space Station and learn more about the current mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station

To find out how to see the station from your own backyard, visit: http://www.spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings

Author / Source / Credit: NASA

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Experts from the United States, Australia, Japan, Netherlands and the United Kingdom will gather at the University of Washington (UW) Tacoma Sept. 9-10 for the first-ever international workshop on the pervasive problem of microplastics in the marine environment. The workshop is sponsored by UW Tacoma and NOAA.

The workshop will focus on the occurrence of plastic debris in the world’s oceans and waterways, the effects of microplastic on the environment, and the effect that microplastic may have on the global cycling of pollutants. Some 40 scientists are expected to attend and contribute research findings.

"We know that microscopic fragments of plastic are floating in the ocean, settling on seabeds, and washing up on shore, but the specific consequences for marine ecosystems are still up in the air," said Joel Baker, Ph.D., UW Tacoma professor and science director of the new Center for Urban Waters in Tacoma. "While large plastic bottles and packaging have well-documented impacts on sea life, little research exists on microscopic plastics."

Researchers will also discuss the relationship between microplastics and persistent organic pollutants, including PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) banned from manufacture and use in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There is increasing concern that plastic marine debris may concentrate other pollutants and further harm marine life when ingested.

"NOAA is committed to better understanding the marine debris problem and the effects of microplastics on the marine environment," said Holly Bamford, Ph.D., director of NOAA's Marine Debris Program. "We share the public's growing interest and concern about microplastics in the ocean and are bringing together scientists with this expertise so we can begin to comprehensively address this emerging issue."

UW-Tacoma and NOAA will publish the results from this workshop along with a review of what is currently known about these topic areas.

University of Washington Tacoma, a campus of a premier research university, focuses educational and research opportunities on the Puget Sound region through its Environmental Science program. The Center for Urban Waters, a collaboration between UW Tacoma, the City of Tacoma and the State of Washington, catalyzes innovative solutions to complex environmental issues in urbanized coastal communities.

NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.

Author / Source / Credit: NoAA

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