Awards and medals 2024
Great Prize
It is awarded to Alain Dabas, Anders Elfving, Didier Morançais and Alessandro d’Ottavi, for “The AEOLUS Space Mission”
Aeolus is a European world first for the direct measurement of vertical wind profiles, filling the most critical gap in the Global Weather Observing System. Based on an observation technique patented by the CNRS, ESA has chosen ultraviolet for the ALADIN lidar, which makes it possible to obtain wind profiles from the Doppler analysis of the Ray-leigh backscatter by molecules that are always present in the depth of the atmosphere, unlike aerosols. In addition, a second highly innovative detection channel allows the Doppler analysis of Mie backscattering by aerosols and cloud particles in the UV, in order to obtain more observations under favorable atmospheric conditions.
Without the synergy of the managerial, technological and scientific skills of these four personalities and their determination to bring to fruition a project facing unprecedented technological difficulties, ESA would not have achieved one of the few world firsts in Earth observation, and the Member States of ESA and EUMETSAT would not have been convinced to invest more than €1.3 billion in an operational programme of two Aeolus-2 satellites.
Vermeil medal
It was awarded to Yan Kerr, Andrés Borges and Jacqueline Boutin, for “the SMOS space mission”.
These three personalities are proposed for the major contributions they have made to the pioneering SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) space mission. As part of the ESA’s (European Space Agency) Earth Explorer programme, the SMOS mission was selected in 2001 and then launched into orbit by ESA on 2 November 2009. It is still operational at the beginning of 2024. The contributions of this observation mission have exceeded the initial objectives. They are linked to many changes subject to climate change: monitoring and study of surfaces
and their water content, oceanographic evolutions, changes in the cryosphere and the electronic content of
The ionosphere
The very name of the satellite mission sums up the objectives, which are strongly linked to the water cycle on Earth. Indeed, Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) is an essential climate variable (ECV): an essential player in ocean-atmosphere exchanges and ocean circulation because it determines, along with temperature, the density of seawater, and a marker of freshwater fluxes exchanged between the ocean and other terrestrial water reservoirs (atmosphere, continents, cryosphere). Surface Soil Moisture (SSM) is also recognized as a VCA: an essential quantity in weather forecasting, its quality of condition at the earth-atmosphere boundary assigns it a leading role in multiple processes and applications.
Academy Medals
A medal was awarded to Maryla Boutineau, for her remarkable two-volume work “Women in the Clouds”, which retraces the participation of women in the conquest of the air in the field of aerostation, aviation and parachuting since 1784.
A medal is awarded to Sébastien Bourdarie, researcher, author of numerous works on radiation belts, associated physics and their modelling. International expert for his expertise in the field of radiation belt physics and in the interpretation of in-situ data
A medal is awarded to Pedro Camanho and Albert Turon Travesa, experts in modelling the damage of composite structures and optimising their resilience, for their exceptional contribution to scientific and industrial advances related to the generalisation of composite materials in current European programmes.
Literary Prize
Awarded to Marc Audrit’s book, “Sur les traces de Jean de Selys, une vie au galop” – published by the Belgian publisher Weyrich.
The starting point of this writing describes the strafing by an RAF plane of the Gestapo headquarters in Brussels on January 20, 1943, its pilot – Jean de Selys Longchamps, a Belgian officer – acting on his own initiative. This feat of arms, which lasted only ten seconds, is meticulously analysed in two chapters, the other fifteen chapters being devoted to the biography of the pilot.
