10th Asteroids, Comets, Meteors meeting: 14-18 July 2008 (Baltimore, Maryland)

Scientific meeting in 2008 on small bodies, from the meeting website:

The 10th Asteroids, Comets, Meteors meeting will be held 14-18 July 2008 (with a reception on the 13th) in Baltimore, Maryland, USA and will be hosted by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

The Asteroids, Comets, Meteors (ACM) meeting is the premier international gathering of scientists who study small bodies. The ACM series began in 1983 in Uppsala, Sweden, as a means of bringing together different groups within the asteroid, comet, and meteor communities who do not often have the opportunity to interact. From this first ACM meeting, a regular conference began. Now occurring every three years, it is the pre-eminent meeting for small-bodies research, with attendance usually in excess of 400. The 2008 ACM meeting will be the 10th in the series and will mark the 25th anniversary of the first meeting in Uppsala.

The scope of presentations and discussion is broad, ranging from discovery and cataloguing of objects, to observations of meteor showers by radar, to modeling the gas production of comets, to plans for future asteroid sample returns, and all topics related to asteroids, comets, and meteors. ACM 2008 is expected to bring together experts on small-bodies studies from around the world. It will be the first time this meeting will be held since the spectacular disintegration of comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, since availability of Stardust samples to the wider research community, since the launch of Dawn, as well as many other significant or anticipated events. ACM 2008 will highlight the research currently being conducted, encourage discussion among researchers in various areas, and identify new avenues of research.

Areas of expertise to be covered at the meeting will include multi-wavelength observations from the ground and space, discovery and cataloguing of objects, numerical studies of the dynamics and impact behavior of small bodies, and laboratory investigations of extraterrestrial materials. Topics will include but are not limited to the following:

* Near-Earth Object searches: Pan-STARRS and other newly founded surveys
* Results of Stardust sample return analyses
* Results from the Hayabusa mission
* Observations of Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3
* Updates on Dawn, Rosetta, New Horizons, and planned missions to small bodies
* Compositional studies of asteroids and comets
* Small body populations: evolution and dynamics
* Interdisciplinary studies: How do asteroids/comets/meteors interrelate?
* Internal structure of small bodies, including presence/formation of satellites
* Origin of the solar system, as deduced from small bodies studies
* Small body impact hazards
* Laboratory studies of small-body processes and constituents

Particular effort will be made to include experts in the analysis of laboratory samples of primitive materials from small bodies, as this will be the first ACM since the Stardust samples have been available for study. ACM 2008 will be an unprecedented opportunity for the Stardust sample analysis community and the small bodies observing community to meet and learn from each other.

Link: Meeting website