Related papers: The Hera Saturn Entry Probe Mission
In this white paper, we present a cross-section of important scientific questions that remain partially or completely unanswered, ranging from Titan exosphere to the deep interior, and we detail which instrumentation and mission scenarios…
The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) is a new powerful radio-telescope, dedicated to the study of the early universe. Its main goal is to characterise the period of the universe where the first galaxies and stars started to form,…
The DARWIN mission is an Infrared free flying interferometer mission based on the new technique of nulling interferometry. Its main objective is to detect and characterize other Earth-like planets, analyze the composition of their…
Saturn formed beyond the snow line in the primordial solar nebula that made it possible for it to accrete a large mass. Disk instability and core accretion models have been proposed for Saturn's formation, but core accretion is favored on…
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…
The Gaia satellite, planned for launch by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2013, is the next generation astrometry mission following Hipparcos. Gaia's primary science goal is to determine the kinematics, chemical structure and evolution…
$\eta$ Carinae is composed of two very massive stars orbiting each other in 5.5 years. The primary star features the densest known stellar wind, colliding with that expelled by its companion. The wind collision region dissipates energy and…
The study of extrasolar planets and of the Solar System provides complementary pieces of the mosaic represented by the process of planetary formation. Exoplanets are essential to fully grasp the huge diversity of outcomes that planetary…
The Gaia space project, planned for launch in 2011, is one of the ESA cornerstone missions, and will provide astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic data of very high quality for about one billion stars brighter than V=20. This will…
Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn, possesses an internal water ocean and jets expelling ocean material into space. Cassini investigations indicated that the subsurface ocean could be a habitable environment having a complex interaction with…
Gaia is an ambitious space astrometry mission of ESA with a main objective to map the sky in astrometry and photometry down to a magnitude 20 by the end of the next decade. While the mission is built and operated by ESA and an industrial…
HERMES (High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites) is a space-borne mission based on a constellation of nano-satellites flying in a low-Earth orbit (LEO). The six 3U CubeSat buses host new miniaturized instruments hosting a hybrid…
The Hesperos mission proposed in this paper is a mission to Venus to investigate the interior structure and the current level of activity. The main questions to be answered with this mission are whether Venus has an internal structure and…
This paper addresses the fundamental science question: "How does solar wind energy flow through the Earth's magnetosphere, how is it converted and distributed?". We need to understand how the Sun creates the heliosphere, and how the planets…
The Solar Close Observations and Proximity Experiments (SCOPE) mission will send a spacecraft into the solar atmosphere at a low altitude of just 5 R_sun from the solar center. It aims to elucidate the mechanisms behind solar eruptions and…
Interior models of Jupiter and Saturn are calculated and compared in the framework of the three-layer assumption, which rely on the perception that both planets consist of three globally homogeneous regions: a dense core, a metallic…
Induced magnetospheres form around planetary bodies with atmospheres through the interaction of the solar wind with their ionosphere. Induced magnetospheres are highly dependent on the solar wind conditions and have only been studied with…
Athena is an X-ray observatory-class mission concept, developed from April to December 2011 as a result of the reformulation exercise for L-class mission proposals in the framework of ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025. Athena's science case is…
The GAIA astrometric mission has recently been approved as one of the next two `cornerstones' of ESA's science programme, with a launch date target of not later than mid-2012. GAIA will provide positional and radial velocity measurements…
As the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) fulfills its primary mission it is executing an unprecedented all-sky survey with the potential to discover distant planets in our own solar system, as well as hundreds of…