The Board on International Scientific Organizations of the National Academies will provide a subward to the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) to provide partial assistance awards to participants in the 2006 COSPAR Scientific Assembly to be held 16-23 July 2006 in Beijing, China. 50% of the requested funding will be used to fund travel grant applicants under the age of 35 who, without assistance, would be unable to attend the Assembly. 20% of the requested funding will go to grant applicants from developing countries. The remaining 30% of the requested funding will be available to other scientists attending the Assembly. Aside from these criteria, the eighty-two Main Scientific Organizers of core Assembly events would judge grant applicants according to the scientific interest of their abstracts.
The International Council for Science (ICSU) established COSPAR in 1958 as an interdisciplinary scientific body concerned with the progress on an international scale of all kinds of scientific investigations carried out with space vehicles, rockets and balloons. The membership of COSPAR is composed of National Academies of Science (or the equivalent) and International Scientific Unions. In the United States, the National Academy of Sciences is the national member, represented by the National Academies' Space Studies Board. COSPAR's objectives are to promote, on an international level, scientific research in space, with emphasis on the exchange of results, information and opinions, and to provide a forum, open to all scientists, for the discussion of problems that may affect scientific space research. These objectives are achieved through the organization of Scientific Assemblies, publications and other means.
