IASB - Institut d'Aéronomie Spatiale de Belgique
The Institut d'Aéronomie Spatiale de Belgique (IASB) is a federal scientific research institute. Created in 1964, its main tasks are research and public service in space aeronomy, i.e. the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere of the Earth and other planets, and of outer space.
IASB activities encompass:
- Focusing on Chemistry & Physics of Atmospheres and Space Physics. This covers the neutral atmosphere from the surface of the planet to the upper layers where escape processes to space have to be taken into account
- designing and building instruments to monitor atmospheres and the space environment;
- operating Belgian experiments on board the International Space Station and other satellites;
- participating in international measurement programmes;
- comparing observations with numerical simulations to validate and improve our knowledge;
- turning scientific know-how into services to the benefit of society;
- Disseminating this knowledge through publications, web services and public outreach.
IASB has been involved in several Earth observation missions (GOMOS, ACE-FTS, IASI/METOP) and has also acquired extensive expertise in validating Earth remote observations with ground-based measurements.
Communication Cell at IASB: The Communication and Information Cell at IASB currently consists of 5 members. They have many years of experience in promoting aeronomy to the general public. They maintain three permanent exhibition sites at science centres whose mission is to educate the general public, with a particular attention to schools (the Planetarium of the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels, Euro Space Centre in Redu and Earth Explorer in Ostend). Apart from that, they also take part in temporary events and/or exhibitions to disseminate information about new developments to a wide public. For these, they often create new material, such as mock-ups, posters, and video material. In collaboration with the scientists involved, the Communication Unit issues regular press releases to the Belgian media, covering our research topics and activities in various media such as TV networks, magazines and daily newspapers, and various reference websites. Besides the maintenance of the institute website, the Communication Cell additionally advices scientists at the set-up of their own project websites.
Infrastructure: IASB has an important IT-infrastructure to support all the research and operational activities. The parts of the infrastructure which are of most interest to the proposal are the storage infrastructure, the high performance computing (HPC) compute clusters, the interconnecting network and the internet connectivity. Additionally the ICT team has dedicated personnel for the support of these systems and their users. The ICT infrastructure of the institute has sufficient capacity and resources available for the proposed tasks in this proposal.
