【September 15, 2014, CMSP News】The Closing Ceremony of 27th Planetary Congress of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) was held in Beijing on September 15. The six-day conference with the theme "Cooperation: To Realize Humanity's Space Dream Together" attracted 91 astronauts from 18 nations. 

Yang Liwei, Deputy Director of China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) and President of the Organizing Committee of this year’s annual meeting, extended congratulations on the success of the conference and showed gratitude to the participants and staff for their hard work. He said, “This conference enhanced understanding and deepened friendships among astronauts. In the future, China will continue to support the work of ASE and make more contributions to human space development.”

Mr Dorin, President of ASE thanked Chinese government and CMSA for support of the conference and praised it as “well-organized”. He noted, “This conference provides us an opportunity to make new friends and enroll new members. I hope that ASE will play a greater role in promoting international cooperation in space.”

Figure 1: Mr Dorin addressed the Closing Ceremony (Taken by Zhang Titi)

During the closing ceremony, Wang Yongzhi, the first chief designer of China's manned-space program, received the "Crystal Helmet Award". China's first astronaut Yang Liwei was granted the "Leonov Medallion", and Wang Yaping was honored the “Best Technical Report Award” for her presentation “Lessons from Outer Space, Seeding Dreams” during the technical session.

Figure 2: Wang Yongzhi received the "Crystal Helmet Award". (Taken by Zhang Titi)

It was announced that the 28th ASE congress will be held in Sweden and that Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi will be the next president of ASE.

The six-day conference includes opening ceremony, one keynote meeting, three technical sessions, two all-astronaut plenary sessions and closing ceremony. During the conference, the astronauts also toured around Beijing Space City and headed to cities of Shenzhen, Tianjin, Xi’an to interact with the public. Through a variety of social events, they spread space knowledge, publicized human space culture and planted the seed of space exploration. ( By Yu Yanjuan)