World Space Observatory/ultraviolet (WSO/UV): progress report

Abstract The World Space Observatory/ultraviolet (WSO/UV) represents a new mission implementation model for large space missions for astrophysics. The process has been brought up to enable, fully scientific needs driven, a logic to be applied to the demands for large collection powers required to undertake space missions which are complementary to the continuously increasing sensitivity of ground-based telescopes. One of the assumptions associated with the idea of a WSO is to avoid the excessive complexity required for multipurpose missions. Although there may exist purely technological or programmatic policy issues, which would suggest such more complex missions to be more attractive, many other aspects, which do not need to be explored in this report, may argue against such a mission model. Following this precept and other reasons, the first implementation model for a WSO has been done for the ultraviolet domain WSO/UV. WSO/UV is a follow-up project of the UN/ESA Workshops on Basic Space Science, organised annually since 1991.