Despite the tragedy of the Columbia accident in February 2003, and the resulting haitus in construction of the International Space Station, the prospects for human space exploration are in many ways brighter than at any time since the Apollo programme in the late 1960s. In January 2004, President Bush announced a new Vision for Space Exploration, which has refocused NASA's objectives towards human missions to the Moon and Mars, and the European Space Agency's Aurora Programme has established similar objectives for Europe.

While the subject of human space exploration is currently controversial in the UK, with many scientists believing that the resources would be better invested in robotic missions, it can be argued that human beings are uniquely qualified to undertake several key scientific investigations in the space environment (ranging from life and physical sciences reseach in microgravity, to geological and biological fieldwork on planetary surfaces). This potential has in fact been recognized by two recent studies. Firstly, in 2003, the independent Microgravity Review Panel recommended that the UK should participate in ESA's space station utilisation programme (ELIPS), noting that "without access to such facilities .... the UK will be excluded from entire areas of scientific endeavour." Secondly, in May 2004, the Cross Research Council Report identified a wide range of potential scientific benefits from participation in the human spaceflight aspects of the Aurora programme, and explicitly called for a re-examination of UK policy in this regard. The time is therefore ripe for a full examination of the potential scientific benefits of human space exploration, and this was the aim of the meeting.

A Summary of the meeting has been published in the February 2005 issue of the RAS journal Astronomy and Geophysics (Vol. 46, pp. 1.17-1.18; 2005); the individual papers have been published in a Special Issue of the journal Earth, Moon and Planets, 94(3-4), 245-266, (2005).