Related papers: The Astronomical, Astrobiological and Planetary Sc…
Some human mission trajectories to Mars include flybys of Venus. These flybys provide opportunities to practice deep space human operations, and offer numerous safe-return-to-Earth options, before committing to longer and lower-cadence…
Stellar astronomy, fueled by massive capital investments, advances in numerical modeling and theory, is resurgent and arguably is on the verge of a magnificent renaissance. Powerful time domain optical surveys, both on ground and in space,…
It is well known that interstellar travel is bounded by the finite speed of light, but on very large scales any rocketeer would also need to consider the influence of cosmological expansion on their journey. This paper examines accelerated…
IRAC excels at detecting distant objects. Due to a combination of the shapes of the spectral energy distributions of galaxies and the low background achieved from space, IRAC reaches greater depth in comparable exposure time at 3.6 and 4.5…
There are at least three compelling reasons for the human race to initiate a major programme to explore and better understand the 'minor planets' of the Solar System: (1) Enhancing scientific knowledge; (2) Mitigating the impact hazard; and…
In this paper we address the consumption of energy by astronomers while performing their professional duties. Although we find that astronomy uses a negligible fraction of the US energy budget, the rate at which energy is consumed by an…
The simple physics of microlensing provides a well-understood tool with which to probe the atmospheres of distant stars in the Galaxy and Local Group with high magnification and resolution. Recent results in measuring stellar surface…
The probability that an exoplanet transits its host star is high for planets in close orbits, but drops off rapidly for increasing semimajor axes. This makes transit surveys for planets with large semimajor axes orbiting bright stars…
Indian Centre for Space Physics has taken a novel strategy to study low energy cosmic rays and astrophysical X-ray sources which involve very light weight payloads up to about five kilograms on board a single or multiple balloons which are…
Provided that sufficient resources are deployed, we can look forward to an extraordinary future in which we will characterize potentially habitable planets. Until now, we have had to base interpretations of observations on habitability…
The development and deployment of interstellar missions will without doubt require orders of magnitude more resources than needed for current or past megaprojects (Apollo, Iter, LHC,...). Question is how enough resources for such…
We summarize the scientific potential of high contrast optical space imaging for studies of extrasolar planets, debris disks, and planet formation. The unique scientific capabilities offered by a 2-m class optical telescope, the technical…
The study of binary stars is critical to apprehend many of the most interesting classes of stars. Moreover, quite often, the study of stars in binary systems is our only mean to constrain stellar properties, such as masses and radii.…
A technique by which a spacecraft can interact with flows of ionized gas in space (the solar wind or interstellar medium) to be accelerated to velocities greater than the wind velocity is explored. Inspired by the dynamic soaring maneuvers…
Space-science programs provide a wide range of application to a nation's key sectors of development: science-technology infrastructure, education, economy and national security. However, the cost of sustaining a space-science program has…
Voyager 3 is a concept mission that sends a space telescope to the interstellar medium in a reasonable amount of time. Voyager 3 would take a direct image of an exoplanet using the solar gravitational lensing at the distance of 550…
We discuss the astrophysical science case for a decihertz gravitational-wave mission. We focus on unique opportunities for scientific discovery in this frequency range, including probes of type IA supernova progenitors, mergers in the…
We demonstrate how observations of pulsars can be used to help navigate a spacecraft travelling in the solar system. We make use of archival observations of millisecond pulsars from the Parkes radio telescope in order to demonstrate the…
As new concepts of sending interstellar spacecraft to the nearest stars are now being investigated by various research teams, crucial questions about the timing of such a vast financial and labor investment arise. If humanity could build…
We investigate obstacles of superluminal "warp drive" travels from interactions with interstellar matter and from curvature effects. The effect of collision of interstellar dust particles and photons with the spacecraft will all lead to a…