Related papers: Mariner 2 and its Legacy: 50 Years on
The ultimate climate emergency is a "runaway greenhouse": a hot and water vapour rich atmosphere limits the emission of thermal radiation to space, causing runaway warming. Warming ceases only once the surface reaches ~1400K and emits…
Venus has regained attention on the international stage with the approval of three new missions by ESA and NASA. As the twin sister of Earth, Venus exhibits a distinct atmosphere, which casts a veil of mystery over the planetary evolution…
Space debris is a major problem for all space-active nations. Adopting high precision measuring techniques will help to produce the reliable and accurate catalogue for space debris and collision avoidance. Laser Ranging is a kind of…
The Cassini spacecraft's Grand Finale flybys through Saturn's ionosphere provided unprecedented insight into the composition and dynamics of the gas giant's upper atmosphere and a novel and complex spacecraft-plasma interaction. In this…
Exploration of terrestrial planets such as Mars are conducted using orbiters, landers and rovers. Cameras and instruments onboard orbiters have enabled global mapping of Mars at low spatial resolution. Landers and rovers such as the Mars…
The Kepler Mission is exploring the diversity of planets and planetary systems. Its legacy will be a catalog of discoveries sufficient for computing planet occurrence rates as a function of size, orbital period, star-type, and insolation…
The application of directed energy to spacecraft mission design is explored using rapid transit to Mars as the design objective. An Earth-based laser array of unprecedented size (10~m diameter) and power (100~MW) is assumed to be enabled by…
The NASA InSight mission has helped to measure the deep interior of Mars using observations of seismic waves excited by marsquakes. Currently, installation of seismometers on the moon is foreseen. We review the case for seismic experiments…
We report vertical thermal structure and wind velocities in the Venusian mesosphere retrieved from carbon monoxide (12CO J=2-1 and 13CO J=2-1) spectral line observations obtained with the Heinrich Hertz Submillimeter Telescope (HHSMT). We…
The quest for other habitable worlds and the search for life among them are major goals of modern astronomy. One way to make progress towards these goals is to obtain high-quality spectra of a large number of exoplanets over a broad range…
For over half a century, scientists have contemplated the potential existence of life within the clouds of Venus. Unknown chemistry leaves open the possibility that certain regions of the Venusian atmosphere are habitable. In situ…
We address the important question of whether the newly discovered exoplanet, Proxima Centauri b (PCb), is capable of retaining an atmosphere over long periods of time. This is done by adapting a sophisticated multi-species MHD model…
Aerocapture is a maneuver which uses aerodynamic drag to slow down a spacecraft in a single pass through the atmosphere. All planetary orbiters to date have used propulsive orbit insertion. Aerocapture is a promising alternative, especially…
This work reviews the long-term evolution of the atmosphere of Venus, and modulation of its composition by interior-exterior cycling. The formation and evolution of Venus's atmosphere, leading to contemporary surface conditions, remain…
Lightning was detected by Voyager 2 at Uranus and Neptune, and weaker electrical processes also occur throughout planetary atmospheres from galactic cosmic ray (GCR) ionisation. Lightning is an indicator of convection, whereas electrical…
The wind mission Aeolus of the European Space Agency was a groundbreaking achievement for Earth observation. Between 2018 and 2023, the space-borne lidar instrument ALADIN onboard the Aeolus satellite measured atmospheric wind profiles with…
The Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA's Great Observatory for infrared astronomy, was launched 2003 August 25 and is returning excellent scientific data from its Earth-trailing solar orbit. Spitzer combines the intrinsic sensitivity achievable…
The long term dreams to approach Mars requires numerous spacecraft attempts for exploration as well as to understand the perception of the red planet. Before launching a mission, the space probe undergoes critical ground testing and…
UV-SCOPE is a mission concept to determine the causes of atmospheric mass loss in exoplanets, investigate the mechanisms driving aerosol formation in hot Jupiters, and study the influence of the stellar environment on atmospheric evolution…
The current explosion in machine learning for climate has led to skilled, computationally cheap emulators for the atmosphere. However, the research for ocean emulators remains nascent despite the large potential for accelerating coupled…