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Most major discoveries in astronomy are unplanned, and result from surveying the Universe in a new way, rather than by testing a hypothesis or conducting an investigation with planned outcomes. For example, of the 10 greatest discoveries…
Long-distance driving is an important component of planetary surface exploration. Unforeseen events often require human operators to adjust mobility plans, but this approach does not scale and will be insufficient for future missions.…
October 1957, and the successful launch of Sputnik 1 into Earth orbit, marked the dawn of the Space Age. The first of the 'fellow travellers' - humanity's first artificial satellite - orbited for a mere three months before re-entering the…
In recent years, the Moon has emerged as an unparalleled extraterrestrial testbed for advancing cuttingedge technological and scientific research critical to enabling sustained human presence on its surface and supporting future…
We review some aspects of the current state of data-intensive astronomy, its methods, and some outstanding data analysis challenges. Astronomy is at the forefront of "big data" science, with exponentially growing data volumes and data…
Astronomy is entering an era of data-driven discovery, due in part to modern machine learning (ML) techniques enabling powerful new ways to interpret observations. This shift in our scientific approach requires us to consider whether we can…
Astronomical software is now a fact of daily life for all hands-on members of our community. Purpose-built software for data reduction and modeling tasks becomes ever more critical as we handle larger amounts of data and simulations.…
This paper proposes an initial theory for robotic systems that can be fully self-maintaining. The new design principles focus on functional survival of the robots over long periods of time without human maintenance. Self-maintaining…
Remote observing seeks to simulate the presence of the astronomer at the telescope. While this is useful, and necessary in some circumstances, simulation is not reality. The drive to abstract the astronomer from the instrument can have…
Most major scientific results produced by ground-based gamma-ray telescopes in the last 30 years have been obtained by expert members of the collaborations operating these instruments. This is due to the proprietary data and software…
Perhaps more than other physical sciences, astronomy is frequently statistical in nature. The objects under study are inaccessible to direct manipulation in the laboratory, so the astronomer is restricted to observing a few external…
We look at what astronomy from the Moon might be like in the visible over the next few decades. The Moon offers the possibility of installing large telescopes or interferometers with instruments larger than those on orbiting telescopes. We…
The study explored the usage of astronomical observations for the identification and tracking of artificial satellites. Spacecraft streaks on astronomical images are a growing issue for the astronomical community. The increasing number of…
CubeSats are small satellites built in standard sizes and form factors, which have been growing in popularity but have thus far been largely ignored within the field of astronomy. When deployed as space-based telescopes, they enable science…
The next decade of survey astronomy has the potential to transform our knowledge of variable stars. Stellar variability underpins our knowledge of the cosmological distance ladder, and provides direct tests of stellar formation and…
To extend the limited scope of autonomy used in prior missions for operation in distant and complex environments, there is a need to further develop and mature autonomy that jointly reasons over multiple subsystems, which we term…
Robot deployment in realistic dynamic environments is a challenging problem despite the fact that robots can be quite skilled at a large number of isolated tasks. One reason for this is that robots are rarely equipped with powerful…
The Observatory Science Operations (OSO) subsystem of the SKAO consists of a range of complex tools which will be used to propose, design, schedule and execute observations. Bridging the gap between the science and telescope domains is the…
The impact of autonomous systems on astrophysics can be just as revolutionary as in our daily lives. This paper includes the following so that the astrophysics community can realize the benefits of autonomous systems: description of…
Large-scale science instruments, such as the distributed radio telescope LOFAR, show that we are in an era of data-intensive scientific discovery. Such instruments rely critically on significant computing resources, both hardware and…