Related papers: Discovery & Depth
A budget neutral strategy is proposed for NSF to lead the implementation of multimessenger astronomy and astrophysics, as outlined in the Astro2010 Decadal Survey. The emerging capabilities for simultaneous measurements of physical and…
X-ray astronomy needs to set bold, science driven goals for the next decade. Only with defined science goals can we know what to work on, and a funding agency appreciate the need for significant technology developments. To be a forefront…
The Astro2010 Decadal Survey recommended a Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) as its top priority for a new large space mission. As conceived by the decadal survey, WFIRST would carry out a dark energy science program, a…
NASA Astrophysics Division funds development of cutting-edge technology to enable its missions to achieve ambitious and groundbreaking science goals. These technology development efforts are managed by the Physics of the Cosmos, Cosmic…
Given the impressive investment by the nation in observational Astronomy and Astrophysics facilities coming on line now and in the near future, we advocate for an increased investment in applied and fundamental research on Astrophysical and…
The number of small satellites has grown dramatically in the past decade from tens of satellites per year in the mid-2010s to a projection of tens of thousands in orbit by the mid-2020s. This presents both problems and opportunities for…
In December 2010, NASA created a Science Definition Team (SDT) for WFIRST, the Wide Field Infra-Red Survey Telescope, recommended by the Astro 2010 Decadal Survey as the highest priority for a large space mission. The SDT was chartered to…
The 2020s will be the most data-rich decade of astronomy in history. As the scale and complexity of our surveys increase, the problem of scheduling becomes more critical. We must develop high-quality scheduling approaches, implement them as…
This invited white paper, submitted to the National Science Foundation in January of 2020, discusses the current challenges faced by the United States astronomical instrumentation community in the era of extremely large telescopes. Some…
WFIRST is the highest priority space mission of the Decadal review, however, it is unlikely to begin in this decade primarily due to a anticipated NASA budget that is unlikely to have sufficient resources to fund such a mission. For this…
Science opportunities and recommendations concerning optical/infrared polarimetry for the upcoming decade in the fields of stars and stellar evolution. Community-based White Paper to Astro2010 in response to the call for such papers.
Measuring scientific development is a difficult task. Different metrics have been put forward to evaluate scientific development; in this paper we explore a metric that uses the number of peer-reviewed, and when available non-peer-reviewed…
Over the past decade, sky surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have proven the power of large data sets for answering fundamental astrophysical questions. This observational progress, based on a synergy of advances in telescope…
The NASA program in X-ray astronomy has two long term goals: 1) to achieve sufficient angular resolution to image the event horizon of a black hole (0.1 micro arc sec) and 2) to achieve sufficient collecting area (50-150 sq m) and angular…
We examine the funding disparity in astronomical research priorities: the Habitable Worlds Observatory is planned to receive over $10 billion over the next two decades whereas extraterrestrial intelligence research receives nearly zero…
I describe the various elements of the NASA Science Mission Directorate's Astrophysics Division Research and Analysis Program and provide quantitative descriptions for factors such as proposal submission characteristics, proposal success…
The NSF's Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship (AAPF) is exceptional among the available postdoctoral awards in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The fellowship is one of the few that allows postdoctoral researchers to pursue an…
This report describes the 2014 study by the Science Definition Team (SDT) of the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission. It is a space observatory that will address the most compelling scientific problems in dark energy,…
Astrophysics spans an enormous range of questions on scales from individual planets to the entire cosmos. To address the richness of 21st century astrophysics requires a corresponding richness of telescopes spanning all bands and all…
Europe and a number of countries in the world are investing significant amounts of public money to operate and maintain large, ground-based astronomical facilities. Even larger projects are under development to observe the faintest and most…