Related papers: WFIRST Science with a Probe Class Mission

The national space programs have an historic opportunity to help solve the global-scale economic and environmental problems of Earth while becoming more effective at science through the use of space resources. Space programs will be more…

The PLATO mission is scheduled for launch early 2027. In this paper we present an overview of the performance drivers for the mission at the time where all flight models of the cameras have been tested and integrated on the optical bench.…

New development approaches, including launch vehicles and advances in sensors, computing, and software, have lowered the cost of entry into space, and have enabled a revolution in low-cost, high-risk Small Satellite (SmallSat) missions. To…

The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will monitor $\sim 2$ deg$^2$ toward the Galactic bulge in a wide ($\sim 1-2~\mu$m) W149 filter at 15-minute cadence with exposure times of $\sim$50s for 6 seasons of 72 days each, for a…

Projections for the earliest interstellar mission possibilities are calculated based on 27 years of data on historic energy trends, societal priorities, required mission energy, and the implications of the Incessant Obsolescence Postulate…

In this article we wish to provide a common set of best practice approaches that should be considered for all effective research grant proposal reviews. The federal government performs a critical role in American competitiveness and…

The PI Launchpad attempts to provide an entry level explanation of the process of space mission development for new Principal Investigators (PIs). In particular, PI launchpad has a focus on building teams, making partnerships, and science…

Over the past two decades, thousands of confirmed exoplanets have been detected; the next major challenge is to characterize these other worlds and their stellar systems. Much information on the composition and formation of exoplanets and…

The Wide-Field Spectroscopic Telescope (WST) is a concept for a 12-m class seeing-limited telescope providing two concentric fields of view for simultaneous Multi-Object Spectroscopy and Integral Field Spectroscopy. The specified wavelength…

I review the status of science with wide field surveys. For many decades surveys have been the backbone of astronomy, and the main engine of discovery, as we have mapped the sky at every possible wavelength. Surveys are an efficient use of…

A white paper submitted to the 2025 NASA Decadal Astrobiology Research and Exploration Strategy (DARES) on the importance of early-career training, support, and retention. The paper identifies two goals for NASA Astrobiology regarding early…

In the last decade, growing evidence has emerged supporting a non-universal stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) in massive galaxies, with a larger number of dwarf stars with respect to the Milky-Way (bottom-heavy IMF). However, a consensus…

Planet Formation research is blooming in an era where we are moving from speaking about "protoplanetary disks" to "planet forming disks" (Andrews et al., 2018). However, this transition is still motivated by indirect (but convincing) hints.…

We describe the scientific motivations, the mission concept and the instrumentation of SPACE, a class-M mission proposed for concept study at the first call of the ESA Cosmic-Vision 2015-2025 planning cycle. SPACE aims to produce the…

Autonomous exploration is a fundamental problem for various applications of unmanned aerial vehicles. Existing methods, however, were demonstrated to insufficient exploration rate, due to the lack of efficient global coverage, conservative…

Undergraduate research is widely regarded as a high impact practice. However, usually only the highest achieving students are rewarded with undergraduate research opportunities. This paper reports on the successful implementation of a…

Efficient data collection is essential in applied studies where frequent measurements are costly, time-consuming, or burdensome. This challenge is especially pronounced in functional data settings, where each subject is observed at only a…

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a NASA MIDEX mission, will survey the entire sky in four bands from 3.3 to 23 microns with a sensitivity 1000 times greater than the IRAS survey. The WISE survey will extend the Two Micron All…

This article summarizes the process by which astronomers and astrophysicists reached a consensus view as to what are the highest priority scientific projects for the decade of the 1990s. I also review the remarkable success of these…

FIRST, the Fibered Imager foR a Single Telescope, is a spectro-imager using single-mode fibers for pupil remapping, allowing measurements beyond the telescope diffraction limit. Integrated on the Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics…