The Opening Ceremony will take place in the ESTEC Erasmus Centre on 8 November at 09:30 CET, presided by the Head of ESTEC, Mr Michel Courtois. Speakers will include Mr Vallerani, Educational Project Manager of SEEDS, and Mr Sacotte, Director of ESA's Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration Programmes, as well as senior representatives of national space agencies ASI, CNES and DLR. The Space Industry will be represented by EADS, Alcatel, Alenia Space and OHB, to name just a few.

Professors from the Politecnico di Torino (Italy), Universität Bremen (Germany) and Supaero Toulouse (France) – the three Universities that established SEEDS – will report on the role of the Academy in space exploration. Presentations on the history of human spaceflight and robotic exploration will follow, together with an overview of the new NASA exploration initiatives.  
 
Note to editors:
 
The SEEDS MSc, which will be taught in English at three sites - the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, the Universität Bremen, Germany; and the Grande Ecole Aérospatiale Supaero in Toulouse, France) is open to students of all nationalities. In Italy the MSc starts in November 2005 and project work will take place in all three universities next year. A maximum of 15 students will be accepted at each of the sites, and applicants should have the equivalent of an MSc degree in industrial engineering, information and communications technologies, or the physical sciences.

The SEEDS MSc is supported by European companies and space agencies involved in exploration projects, including ESA, the Italian Space Agency ASI, the French Space Agency CNES, Alenia Spazio, Astrium, OHB Systems and the EADS-ST group of companies.

To help meet the fees of the course, a number of scholarships will be offered by companies and space agencies sponsoring the MSc.

The deadline for applications is now 30 September 2005.

For more information please contact:

COREP
Tel: +39.011.5645107,
e-mail: formazione@corep.it,
url: http://www.formazione.corep.it/space.htm