Related papers: INPOP new release: INPOP13b
The era of multi-messenger astrophysics requires rapid and efficient follow-up of transient events, many of which, such as gravitational waves (GW), gamma-ray bursts (GRB), and high-energy neutrinos, suffer from poor sky localisation. We…
The X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS) on the MESSENGER spacecraft provided measurements of major-element ratios across Mercury's surface. We present global maps of Mg/Si, Al/Si, S/Si, Ca/Si, and Fe/Si derived from XRS data collected throughout…
Pulsar timing arrays are sensitive to gravitational waves from supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries at orbital separations of << 1pc. There is currently an observational paucity of such systems, although they are central figures in…
We describe the current state of knowledge about Mercury's interior structure. We review the available observational constraints, including mass, size, density, gravity field, spin state, composition, and tidal response. These data enable…
The Mars Odyssey spacecraft carries two experiments which are capable of detecting cosmic gamma-ray bursts and soft gamma repeaters. Since April 2001 they have detected over 275 bursts and, in conjunction with the other spacecraft of the…
The MESSENGER mission sought to discover what physical processes determined Mercury's high metal to silicate ratio. Instead, the mission has discovered multiple anomalous characteristics about our innermost planet. The lack of FeO and the…
The Los Alamos National Laboratory designed and built Mars Odyssey Neutron Spectrometer (MONS) has been in excellent health operating from February 2002 to the present. MONS measures the neutron leakage albedo from galactic cosmic ray…
We present theoretical analysis of the astrometric searches for extrasolar planets with the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). Particularly, we derive a model for the future measurements with SIM and discuss the problem of reliable…
Shemar et al. (2016) presented results based on the output of a feasibility study for the European Space Agency (ESA) on the use of X-ray pulsars for deep space navigation, a concept often referred to as 'XNAV'. Here we describe some of the…
This paper presents innovative solutions to critical challenges in planetary and deep-space exploration electronics. We synthesize findings across diverse mission profiles, highlighting advances in: (1) MARTIAN positioning systems with…
We review the results from {\it Mariner 10} regarding Mercury's gravity field and the results from radar ranging regarding topography. We discuss the implications of improving these results, including a determination of the polar component,…
The upcoming space missions, MESSENGER and BepiColombo with onboard instrumentation capable of measuring the rotational parameters stimulate the objective to reach an accurate theory of the rotational motion of Mercury. For obtaining the…
In the last years, a new generation of interplanetary space missions have been designed for the exploration of the solar system. At the same time, radio-science instrumentation has reached an unprecedented level of accuracy, leading to a…
Multi-messenger astronomy has experienced an explosive development in the past few years. While not being a particularly young field, it has recently attracted a lot of attention by several major discoveries and unprecedented observation…
In this paper we present a new method for dating the surface of the Moon, obtained by modeling the incoming flux of impactors and converting it into a size distribution of resulting craters. We compare the results from this model with the…
Time-domain astrophysics has leaped forward with the direct discovery of gravitational waves and the emergence of new generation instruments for multi-messenger studies. The capacity of the multi-messenger multi-wavelength community to…
We call attention to the surprising similarity between the newly discovered planetary system around PSR B1257+12 and the inner solar system. The similarity is in the ratios of the orbital radii and the masses of the three planets.
The ExoClock project has been created with the aim of increasing the efficiency of the Ariel mission. It will achieve this by continuously monitoring and updating the ephemerides of Ariel candidates over an extended period, in order to…
The Mercury Orbiter radio Science Experiment (MORE) is one of the experiments on-board the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury, to be launched in October 2018. Thanks to full on-board and on-ground instrumentation performing very…
Three possible applications of lunar laser ranging to space geodesy are studied. First, the determination of daily Earth orientation parameters (UT0 and variation of latitude), which is rarely used nowadays in presence of all-year VLBI,…