Related papers: Galactic planetary science
A close partnership between people and partially autonomous machines has enabled decades of space exploration. But to further expand our horizons, our systems must become more capable. Increasing the nature and degree of autonomy - allowing…
Our knowledge of the Universe remains discovery-led: in the absence of adequate physics-based theory, interpretation of new results requires a scientific methodology. Commonly, scientific progress in astrophysics is motivated by the…
Laboratory studies for planetary science and astrobiology aimat advancing our understanding of the Solar System through the promotion of theoretical and experimental research into the underlying processes that shape it. Laboratory studies…
Understanding the origin and long-term evolution of the Solar System is a fundamental goal of planetary science and astrophysics. This chapter describes our current understanding of the key processes that shaped our planetary system,…
Our understanding of extra-solar planet systems is highly driven by advances in observations in the past decade. Thanks to high precision spectrograph, we are able to reveal unseen companions to stars with the radial velocity method. High…
The discovery of binaries in each of the major populations of minor bodies in the solar system is propelling a rapid growth of heretofore unattainable physical information. The availability of mass and density constraints for minor bodies…
Started approximately in the late 1980s, exoplanetology has up to now unveiled the main gross bulk characteristics of planets and planetary systems. In the future it will benefit from more and more large telescopes and advanced space…
Over the course of the past two decades, observational surveys have unveiled the intricate orbital structure of the Kuiper Belt, a field of icy bodies orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune. In addition to a host of readily-predictable orbital…
The geophysics of extrasolar planets is a scientific topic often regarded as standing largely beyond the reach of near-term observations. This reality in no way diminishes the central role of geophysical phenomena in shaping planetary…
For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…
The study of planets outside our solar system may lead to major advances in our understanding of the Earth, and provide insight into the universal set of rules by which planets form and evolve. To achieve these goals requires applying…
The overarching goal of planetary astronomy is to deduce how the present collection of objects found in our Solar System were formed from the original material present in the proto-solar nebula. As over two hundred exo-planetary systems are…
Exoplanets, or planets outside our own solar system, have long been of interest to astronomers; however, only in the past two decades have scientists had the technology to characterize and study planets so far away from us. With advanced…
Our understanding of the processes that are relevant to the formation and maintenance of habitable planetary systems is advancing at a rapid pace, both from observation and theory. The present review focuses on recent research that bears on…
The last two decades have seen the number of known exoplanets increase from a small handful to nearly 2000 known exoplanets, thousands more planet candidates, and several upcoming missions that are expected to further increase the…
For the last few decades the study of disks around stars young and old and of different types have progressed significantly. During the same time a completely new discipline, the study of exoplanets, planets orbiting stars other than our…
Nearly a century after the true nature of galaxies as distant "island universes" was established, their origin and evolution remain great unsolved problems of modern astrophysics. One of the most promising ways to investigate galaxy…
Astronomy is at times a science of unexpected discovery. When it is, and if we are lucky, new intellectual territories emerge to challenge our views of the cosmos. The recent indirect detections using high-precision Doppler spectroscopy of…
Understanding the galaxy in which we live is one of the great intellectual challenges facing modern science. With the advent of high quality observational data, the chemical evolution modeling of our galaxy has been the subject of numerous…
This article reviews the emerging field of exo-geoscience, focusing on the geological and geophysical processes thought to influence the evolution and (eu)habitability of rocky exoplanets. We examine the possible roles of planetary…