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In recent years, the Moon has emerged as an unparalleled extraterrestrial testbed for advancing cuttingedge technological and scientific research critical to enabling sustained human presence on its surface and supporting future…
NASA and ESA are preparing a series of human exploration missions using the four-person Orion crew vehicle, launched by NASA's Space Launch System, and a Lunar Orbiting Platform-Gateway (LOP-G) that enable long duration (>30 days)…
While almost everything that astronomers study occurs in the vacuum of space, astronomy itself does not `happen in a vacuum'. Interactions between scientists, as well as outreach to members of the public, improve extensively from access to…
Over the past decades and even centuries, the astronomical community has accumulated a signif-icant heritage of recorded observations of a great many astronomical objects. Those records con-tain irreplaceable information about long-term…
Stratospheric balloons offer cost-effective access to space and grant the opportunity for fast scientific innovation cycles and higher-risk explorations. In addition to science pathfinders, they serve as platforms for technology…
The scientific ambitions of the 2040s will require large, interdisciplinary teams operating across continents, institutions, and increasingly heterogeneous political and funding landscapes. While significant effort is devoted to advancing…
In contrast to manned missions, the application of autonomous robots for space exploration missions decreases the safety concerns of the exploration missions while extending the exploration distance since returning transportation is not…
We review some aspects of the current state of data-intensive astronomy, its methods, and some outstanding data analysis challenges. Astronomy is at the forefront of "big data" science, with exponentially growing data volumes and data…
The United Nations Programme on Space Applications, implemented by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, promotes the benefits of space-based solutions for sustainable economic and social development. The Programme assists…
This article is a second analysis step from the descriptive arXiv:2001.10952 preprint. This work is aimed to arise awareness to the scientific astronomical community about the negative impact of satellites' mega-constellations and put in…
The carbon footprint of astronomical research is an increasingly topical issue with first estimates of research institute and national community footprints having recently been published. As these assessments have typically excluded the…
There is a long history of radio telescopes being used to augment the radio antennas regularly used to conduct telemetry, tracking, and command of deep space spacecraft. Radio telescopes are particularly valuable during short-duration…
At the far reaches of the outer Solar System, the ice giants remain the last class of planets yet to be studied using orbiters. The 2023-2032 Planetary Science Decadal Survey has underscored the importance of the ice giants in understanding…
The shell bound by the Karman line at a height of 80 to 100km above the Earth's surface, and Geosynchronous Orbit, at 36,000km, is defined as the orbital space surrounding the Earth. It is within this region, and especially in Low Earth…
For centuries, the rich nocturnal environment of the starry sky could be modelled only by analogue tools such as paper planispheres, atlases, globes and numerical tables. The immersive sky simulator of the twentieth century, the…
CubeSats are excellent platforms to rapidly perform simple space experiments. Several hundreds of CubeSats have already been successfully launched in the past few years and the number of announced launches grows every year. These platforms…
The astronomical community is grappling with the increasing volume and complexity of data produced by modern telescopes, due to difficulties in reducing, accessing, analyzing, and combining archives of data. To address this challenge, we…
Forecasting optical turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere has been an ambitious challenge for the astronomical scientific community for several decades. While earlier research primarily focused on whether it was possible to predict optical…
We take a fresh look at about 60 years of recommendations for US federal funding for astronomical and astrophysical facilities provided by seven survey committees at roughly 10-year intervals. It remains true that very roughly one third of…
The amount of data produced by large observational facilities and space missions has led to the archiving and on-line accessibility of much of this data, available to the entire astronomical community. This allows a much wider…