Upcoming AIAA Space conference to have a “Space Tethers” track

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) hosts several conferences each year.  In this year’s Space 2009 Conference and Exposition, being held in Pasadena, California in September of this year,they are having a track on ‘Space Tethers and Technology’.  From the conference flyer:

Space Tethers and Technology

Space tethers show great promise for enabling a variety of future space missions, both as engineering components and as scientific components. Applications of space tethers include propulsion, space structures, remote sensing, and artificial gravity, to name a few. To date, several tethered missions have flown and many more have been proposed for flight. This track will focus on the missions enabled and the technologies necessary for exploiting the use of space tethers.

Technical topics include:

  • Missions Enabled by Space Tethers
  • Technologies to Support Space Tether Missions

For questions, please contact:
Sven G. Bilén
AIAA Space Tethers Technical Committee (STETC)
The Pennsylvania State University
E-mail: sbilen [at] psu.edu

The track is mentioned on Page 7 of the conference flyer.

While this is not specifically a ‘Space Elevator track’, any research/work done with Space Tethers will directly or indirectly benefit the concept of a Space Elevator.

One other note: The former NASA liason to the Space Elevator Games, Ken Davidian, is a co-chair of the Commercial Space Track in this conference.

(hat tip to @marckboucher)