2022 International Workshop

The second international scientific workshop on LARES 2 (the fifth on LARES), originally scheduled for May 2020, has been postponed until late May 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The workshop hosted the first award cerimony of the John Archibald Wheeler Prize, which was established to honour scientists who have made a significant contribution to the development of general relativity, gravitation and related fields of science.

The opening ceremony and the presentation of the Wheeler Prizes took place at the headquarters of the Italian Space Agency. The award was presented to the Nobel Laureates in Physics Roger Penrose and Kip Thorne, as well as to the astrophysicist and cosmologist Igor Novikov.

The event was opened by ASI President Giorgio Saccoccia, followed by presentations from Mario Cosmo (Director of Science and Research), Barbara Negri (Head of the Human Spaceflight Unit), Agostino Neri (Head of the VEGA-C Launcher System Integration and Launch System Synthesis Office) and Erasmo Carrera (presidente dell’AIDAA). La giornata si è conclusa con le presentazioni di rappresentanti dell’INAF, other scientific institutions and the industries involved.

The workshop continued at the Grand Hotel Gianicolo with presentations of scientific work related to the missions, and at Casina di Macchia Madama, where the winners of the Wheeler Prize, together with Paul Davies, took part in a round-table discussion on the topic of time travel.