The 71st IAC Took Place on October 12-14, 2020 in a Virtual Format

The 71st International Astronautical Congress (IAC) took place on October 12-14, 2020 in a virtual format and gathered space enthusiasts from all over the world.

The IAC is an annual event held by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), the world's most prestigious international space organization, since 1950 in different countries around the world. To ensure the sustainability of this prestigious event, the IAF, which has 407 members from 71 countries, held this year's Congress in a virtual format.

This year’s “Cyberspace Edition” of the IAC has gathered over 13,000 participants of the international space community from 135 countries, including heads of space agencies, scientific centers, and international organizations, as well as famous scientists, high-level professionals from private sector, young researchers and students. Jim Bridenstine (NASA), Dmitry Rogozin (ROSCOSMOS), Hiroshi Yamakawa (JAXA), Lisa Campbell (Canadian Space Agency), K.Sivan (ISRO), Jan Woerner (ESA) and Kejian Zhang (CNSA), were among the representatives of the leading space agencies that celebrated the opening of the 71stInternational Astronautical Congress. 

The Congress was remembered with over 1300 high caliber presentations and sessions, bringing together the masterminds of the industry. Various trending topics, including the challenges and opportunities created by the ongoing pandemic for the space industry, inter-planetary travel, exploration of deep space, and the potential of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in the space sector were among the world-class sessions organized by the IAF. The session on NASA-led “Artemis mission”, was one of the highlights of this year’s plenary program, which engaged leaders from government and industry who are working on landing “the first woman and the next man” on the Moon by 2024. 

When it comes to the technical sessions, symposiums on various space-related topics such as Earth observation, human spaceflight, space and society, transportation solutions and innovations, business innovations and other subjects, contributed to making the IAC 2020 an informative and memorable event. 

The 71st IAC was the first ever free of charge virtual congress organized by the International Astronautical Federation which allowed thousands of participants to benefit from the event. 

It is worth to mention that the next IACs will be hosted in 2021 in Dubai, in 2022 in Paris and in 2023 in Baku. Azercosmos, as a proud host of the IAC 2023, has already begun large-scale preparations for the successful organization of the 74th IAC.