The First IPEWG Meeting Final Circular The enclosed please find the final circular of the first IPEWG meeting. Please read it carefully as it tells you important tips for you to safely reach the official hotel and the meeting venue. The final program will be posted separately as soon as it is fixed; meanwhile this circular includes its semi-final draft so that contributors at least can check dates and durations of their presentations and dicussions. (IPEWG LOC: Last updated on December 30, 2007)   <Scopes> Thanks to successful development of enabling technologies for deep space exploration, missions to small solar system bodies have revolutionized our understandingof the Solar System’s origin and evolution in the last decade.　　At present, rendezvous, impact, landing and sample return missions to asteroids and comets such as NEAR-Shoemaker, Hayabusa, Stardust, Deep Impact, Rosetta,Dawn, EPOXI and NEXT as well as New Horizons, a fly-by mission to EKBOs,　are completed or still in the middle of operation. Also more challenging, new missions are under development or under concept studies by several space agencies including Hayabusa-2, Hayabusa Mk-II(Marco Polo), Don Quijote, OSIRIS, and Phobos-Grunt. In addition to scientific and engineering motivations, NEO studies receive increasing interests in the context of planetary defense, deep space human spaceflight and potential in-situ resource utilization. In 1980’s, the inter-agency coordination group for Comet Halley exploration proved that synergy of coordinated individual missions could enrich total outcomes more than each result combined.Since then, international exploration working groups participated by international space agencies have been formed and played key roles for advancing fields of solar terrestrial physics, Moon and Mars missions. As we are entering the second golden age of the primitive body exploration in upcoming decade, now is the appropriate time to create the International Primitive Body Exploration Working Group (IPEWG) in order to promote international collaborations and to maximize outcomes of each mission.　　With these in mind, the first IPEWG meeting will be hosted by JAXA at Okinawa,the southern-most, tropical island in Japan. 　All space agencies,　scientists,　engineers and other interested stakeholders are cordially invited. JSPEC　Program Office   Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency(JAXA) JAXA Space Exploration Center(JSPEC) 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Sagamihara,　Kanagawa. 229-8510, JAPAN Fax. +81-42-759-8675         hosted by : Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency     Copyright 2007 Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency   JAXA Space Exploration Center(JSPEC)