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Planet population synthesis models predict an abundance of planets with semi-major axes between 1-10 au, yet they lie at the edge of the detection limits of most planet finding techniques. Discovering these planets and studying their…
Solar Orbiter, the first mission of ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme and a mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, will explore the Sun and heliosphere from close up and out of the ecliptic plane. It was launched…
Radio wavelength astrometry of stars and other objects has a long and productive history. The use of that technique to determine whether stars have planets around them would cover a nearly unique part of the parameter space for detection of…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), planned for launch in the 2040s, represents the next major step in exoplanet characterisation. HWO will, for the first time, enable detailed studies of the atmospheres and surfaces of Earth-like…
Autonomous Science is a field of study which aims to extend the autonomy of exploration robots from low level functionality, such as on-board perception and obstacle avoidance, to science autonomy, which allows scientists to specify…
Solar Orbiter is the first space mission observing the solar plasma both in situ and remotely, from a close distance, in and out of the ecliptic. The ultimate goal is to understand how the Sun produces and controls the heliosphere, filling…
One of the promising methods to search for life on extra-solar planets (exoplanets) is to detect life's signatures in their atmospheres. Spectra of exoplanet atmospheres at the modest resolution needed to search for oxygen, carbon dioxide,…
As the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) fulfills its primary mission it is executing an unprecedented all-sky survey with the potential to discover distant planets in our own solar system, as well as hundreds of…
In the present-day context, small satellites and their constellations consisting of varying sizes (nano, micro, pico satellites) are being favored for remote sensing and in situ probing of the heliosphere and terrestrial…
Upcoming biosignature searches focus on indirect indicators to infer the presence of life on other worlds. Aside from just signaling the presence of life, however, some biosignatures can contain information about the state that a planet's…
Measuring science is based on comparing articles to similar others. However, keyword-based groups of thematically similar articles are dominantly small. These small sizes keep the statistical errors of comparisons high. With the growing…
The search for spectroscopic biosignatures with the next-generation of space telescopes could provide observational constraints on the abundance of exoplanets with signs of life. An extension of this spectroscopic characterization of…
The ESA Gaia mission, to be launched during 2013, will observe billions of objects, among which many galaxies, during its scanning of the sky. This will provide a large space-based dataset with unprecedented spatial resolution. Because of…
The NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program's SAG15 group has solicited, collected, and organized community input on high-level science questions that could be addressed with future direct imaging exoplanet missions and the type and quality of…
The core of scientific research is turning new ideas into reality. From the school science fair to the search for the secrets of dark energy, high-quality research consists of scientific investigation constrained within the scope of a…
Stellar activity is a potential important limitation to the detection of low mass extrasolar planets with indirect methods (RV, photometry, astrometry). In previous papers, using the Sun as a proxy, we investigated the impact of stellar…
A high level of diversity has already been observed among the planets of our own Solar System. As such, one expects extrasolar planets to present a wide range of distinctive features, therefore the characterisation of Earth- and super…
There is an opportunity to advance both solar system and extrasolar planetary studies that does not require the construction of new telescopes or new missions but better use and access to inter-disciplinary data sets. This approach…
Motility is an essential factor for an organism's survival and diversification. With the advent of novel single-cell technologies, analytical frameworks and theoretical methods, we can begin to probe the complex lives of microscopic motile…
The World Space Observatory is an unconventional space project proceeding via distributed studies. The present design, verified for feasibilty, consists of a 1.7-meter telescope operating at the second Largangian point of the Earth-Sun…