COSPAR’s programme of Capacity-Building Workshops – An up-date Original Research Article

The availability of large archives of data from space missions via the internet provides an important research opportunity for scientists in developing countries. The aim of the COSPAR Capacity-Building Workshop programme is to ensure this opportunity is taken up as widely as possible. The character of the workshops and the programme for the first 5 years are described. Evaluation of the longer-term results of the first workshop which was held in Brazil in 2001 show that a good proportion of participants have used archival data and have produced publishable results from it. Some comments are made about future development of the programme.