Related papers: Breakthrough capability for the NASA Astrophysics …
The commercial SmallSat industry is booming and has developed numerous low-cost, capable satellite buses. SmallSats can be used as vehicles for technology development or to host science missions. Missions hosted on SmallSats can answer…
The Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument is a high-resolution imaging spectrometer operating at extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths. In this paper, we present the concept, design, and pre-launch performance of…
Improvements in the precision of the astrophysical flux scale are needed to answer fundamental scientific questions ranging from cosmology to stellar physics. The unexpected discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating was…
The Breakthrough Listen Initiative has embarked on a comprehensive SETI survey of nearby stars in the Milky Way that is vastly superior to previous efforts as measured by a wide range of different metrics. SETI surveys traditionally ignore…
The proposed SuperNova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP) mission will have a two-meter class telescope delivering diffraction-limited images to an instrumented 0.7 square-degree field sensitive in the visible and near-infrared wavelength regime. We…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets transiting bright and nearby stars. TESS has been selected by NASA for launch in 2017 as an Astrophysics Explorer mission. The spacecraft will be placed into a highly…
We study the abundances of the elements He through Pb in Fe-rich impulsive solar energetic-particle (SEP) events with measurable abundances of ions with atomic number Z>2 observed on the Wind spacecraft, and their relationship with coronal…
The exceptional sensitivity of the SKA will allow observations of the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization (CD/EoR) in unprecedented detail, both spectrally and spatially. This wealth of information is buried under Galactic and…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will be a discovery machine for the astronomy and physics communities, revealing astrophysical phenomena from the Solar System to the outer reaches of the observable Universe. While many…
The Solar Gravitational Lens (SGL) allows for major brightness amplification ($\sim 10^{11}$ at wavelength of $1~\mu$m) and extreme angular resolution ($\sim10^{-10}$ arcsec) within a narrow field of view. A meter-class telescope, with a…
Solar Orbiter strives to unveil how the Sun controls and shapes the heliosphere and fills it with energetic particle radiation. To this end, its Energetic Particle Detector (EPD) has now been in operation, providing excellent data, for just…
The SuperNova / Acceleration Probe (SNAP) is a space-based experiment to measure the expansion history of the Universe and study both its dark energy and the dark matter. The experiment is motivated by the startling discovery that the…
The SKA will build upon early detections of the EoR by precursor instruments, such as MWA, PAPER, and LOFAR, and planned instruments, such as HERA, to make the first high signal-to-noise measurements of fluctuations in the 21 cm brightness…
Tracing the formation and evolution of all supermassive black holes, including the obscured ones, understanding how black holes influence their surroundings and how matter behaves under extreme conditions, are recognized as key science…
JEM-EUSO, on board of the Japanese Exploration Module of the International Space Station, is being proposed as the first space observatory devoted to UHECR. Its privileged position at 430 km above the Earth surface, combined with a large…
Starting in 2008, NASA has provided the exoplanet community an observational program aimed at obtaining the highest resolution imaging available as part of its mission to validate and characterize exoplanets, as well as their stellar…
A major goal of modern astrophysics is to understand the processes by which the universe evolved from its initial simplicity, as seen in measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background, to the universe we see today, with complexity on all…
Ions and electrons accelerated to high energies during flares and coronal mass ejections at the Sun may escape the solar atmosphere and, guided by the interplanetary magnetic fields, propagate through space to near-Earth locations. These…
The remarkable optical properties of the solar gravitational lens (SGL) include major brightness amplification (~1e11 at wavelength of 1 um) and extreme angular resolution (~1e-10 arcsec) in a narrow field of view. A mission to the SGL…
Mini--EUSO (Multiwavelength Imaging New Instrument for the Extreme Universe Space Observatory, known as \emph{UV atmosphere} in the Russian Space Program) is the first mission of the JEM-EUSO program on board the International Space…