P R E F A C E

This special issue of the international journal of comparative planetology, Earth, Moon and Planets, contains invited contributions delivered at the second United Nations/European Space Agency Workshop on Basic Space Science for developing countries, held from 2 to 7 November, 1992, in San Jose, Costa Rica. The Work- shop was co-sponsored by the European Space Agency and The Planetary Society, organized in cooperation with the Government of Costa Rica and hosted by the University of Costa Rica. The Workshop program focused on planetary science, while the second segment of this Workshop, held from 9 to 13 November, 1992, in Bogota (Colombia), covered topics related to cosmology and astronomy space missions. The Proceedings of the Colombia segment of the Workshop will be published in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science.

The Workshop was part of the United Nations Programme on Space Appli- cations for 1992, which annually organizes this Workshop to foster the worldwide development of astronomy, particularly in countries where this science in all its aspects has not yet been fully developed. The title of the meeting, Basic Space Science, was chosen intentionally as an attempt to reflect the fact, that in many developing countries, astronomical research is still in its infancy, while more application oriented fields of space science are fairly developed and provide oppor- tunities to accommodate astronomical research projects. The first Workshop of this series was held in India in 1991 for space scientists from Asia and the Pacific region. The third Workshop will be organized for African countries to be held in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1993.

We are grateful to the late Professor Zdenek Kopal for his advice and valuable cooperation in bringing out these Proceedings.

The Scientific Organizing Committee consisted of A. A. Abiodun, W. Fernan- dez, L. Friedman, H. J. Haubold, N. Jasentuliyana, R. Lopes Gautier, A. Ocampo, S. Torres, and W. Wamsteker.

We express our gratitude to the University of Costa Rica for making available the facilities for conducting the Workshop, the National Academy of Sciences of Costa Rica, the Ministry of Science and Technology of Costa Rica, and the Latin American Center of Physics for their continued support.

The fast majority of space scientists of Costa Rica were involved in some way or another in the preparation of the meeting. They are too numerous to mention here but their support and enthusiasm are gratefully acknowledged.

WALTER FERNANDEZ

University of Costa Rica HANS J. HAUBOLD

United Nations

WKAP ARCHIEF

Earth, Moon, and Planets 63: iii, 1993. © 1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.