The forum Micro-arcsecond Astrometry Exoplanets Detection around Nearby Stars was successfully held at ISSI-Beijing on August 22-23, 2014.

The forum’s main aims were to discuss the current status as well as visions of the detection and characterization of planetary systems consisting in a mixed cortege of terrestrial and giant planets, with a special regard to Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars.

The debate mainly focused on the Space Micro-arcsecond Astrometry to Search for the Terrestrial Exo-Planets (STEP Mission), one of the candidate missions under pre-study supported by the CAS Strategic Pioneer Program on Space Science.

After starting with an overview of the exoplanet detection and a short introduction of the GAIA mission, the forum continued with a discussion on the key science of the terrestrial planets, its occurrence and evolution as well as the habitable zone of the explanatory system. As a main goal of the forum, possible synergies, which can be gained through complementary missions and international collaboration, were evaluated. The lively debates contributed to a very successful forum where the participants critically yet constructively discussed all of STEP’s strengths and to what has to be further improved.

A total of 25 leading scientists from UK (Queen Mary University of London, Cambridge University), USA (California Institute of Technology, University of California at Santa Cruz), Switzerland (University of Bern, Geneva Observatory), France (Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie), Austria (Grazer Institut fur weltraumforschung), Germany (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft) and China (Tsinghua University; Purple Mountain Observatory, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Xi’an Institute of Optical and Precision Mechanics, and National Space Science Center, under the Chinese Academy of Science), attended the forum.

This forum was convened by CHEN Ding (NSSC, China), WU Ji (NSSC, China), Michael Shao (Caltech, USA), Doug Lin (UCSC, USA), and Maurizio Falanga (ISSI-BJ, China).

An issue of TAIKONG, the ISSI-BJ magazine, will be devoted to the insight gained at this Forum and distributed to the science communities and space science institutions.