Prof. Mashhoor Al-Wardat, the Director of the SAASST Academics Department, presented the lecture. Prof. Mashhoor highlighted the different SOO publications for the past two years and the future research projects of the optical observatories. The emphasis was on the Hipparcos and Gaia measurements and the discrepancies in the data, especially when finding the distances to stars. This is important for the determination of physical parameters like mass. Along with the main research themes of SOO are the observations of binary star systems, exoplanets, and lunar impacts.