Related papers: The THESEUS space mission concept: science case, d…

A transiting planet invites us to measure its size, mass, orbital parameters, atmospheric composition, and other characteristics. But the invitation can only be accepted if the host star is bright enough for precise measurements of its flux…

Gaia is a cornerstone mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) selected in 2000, with a target launch date of 2011. The Gaia mission will perform a survey of about 1 billion sources brighter than V=20. Its goal is to provide astrometry…

Gamma rays in the band from 30 MeV to 300 GeV, used in combination with direct measurements and with data from radio and X-ray bands, provide a powerful tool for studying the origin of Galactic cosmic rays. Gamma-ray Large Area Space…

The Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST) is a proposed very large area coded aperture telescope array, incorporating 8m^2 of pixellated Cd-Zn-Te (CZT) detectors, to conduct a full-sky imaging and temporal hard x-ray (10-600 keV)…

GRIPS is planned to be the next great satellite-born survey mission lead by Europe; it will look into the cosmos with unprecedented accuracy in several bands of the EM spectrum (infrared, X-rays, MeV gamma-rays); in particular in…

JANUS is a NASA small explorer class mission which just completed phase A and was intended for a 2013 launch date. The primary science goals of JANUS are to use high redshift (6<z<12) gamma ray bursts and quasars to explore the formation…

Extraterrestrial gamma-ray astronomy is now a source of new knowledge in the fields of astrophysics, cosmic-ray physics, and the nature of dark matter. The next absolutely necessary step in the development of extraterrestrial high-energy…

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission. Following its scheduled launch in 2017, TESS will focus on detecting exoplanets around the nearest and brightest stars in the sky, for which detailed…

Mini-EUSO is a telescope observing the Earth in the ultraviolet band from the International Space Station. It is a part of the JEM-EUSO program, paving the way to future larger missions, such as KEUSO and POEMMA, devoted primarily to the…

The multi-wavelength detection of GW170817 has inaugurated multi-messenger astronomy. The next step consists in interpreting observations coming from population of gravitational wave sources. We introduce saprEMo, a tool aimed at predicting…

The All-sky Medium Energy Gamma-ray Observatory eXplorer (AMEGO-X) is designed to identify and characterize gamma rays from extreme explosions and accelerators. The main science themes include: supermassive black holes and their connections…

Over the last three decades, an exceptionally good science case has been made for pursuing gravitational wave (GW) astronomy. This has engendered a worldwide effort to detect the extremely weak signals generated by expected sources. With…

We propose a new, simple, dedicated X-ray mission to measure the power spectrum of density fluctuations in the Universe, by accurately mapping the X-ray background on the whole sky on scales of arounf one sq deg. Since the method relies on…

This paper is the third in the series on the technology development for the EXCEDE (EXoplanetary Circumstellar Environments and Disk Explorer) mission concept, which in 2011 was selected by NASA's Explorer program for technology development…

HERMES-Pathfinder is a constellation of six 3U nano-satellites hosting simple but innovative X-ray detectors for determining the positions of, and monitoring cosmic high-energy transients such as gamma-ray bursts and the electromagnetic…

XEUS is a large area telescope aiming to rise X-ray Astronomy to the level of Optical Astronomy in terms of collecting areas. It will be based on two satellites, locked on a formation flight, one with the optics, one with the focal plane.…

The Origins Space Telescope (OST) will transform our understanding of the Universe, from formation of the earliest galaxies to the creation of habitable worlds. OST's Mission Concept 1, the subject of this report, features a cold (4 K)…

The Gamma-Ray Integrated Detectors (GRID) is a space mission concept dedicated to monitoring the transient gamma-ray sky in the energy range from 10 keV to 2 MeV using scintillation detectors onboard CubeSats in low Earth orbits. The…

The 511 keV electron-positron annihilation feature near the galactic center has been detected for more than half a century, yet its origin remains a mystery. In this paper, we describe a concept for a balloon-borne 511 keV $\gamma$-ray…

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are some of the most energetic and exotic events in the Universe, however their behaviour at the highest energies (>10 GeV) is largely unknown. Although the Fermi-LAT space telescope has detected several GRBs in this…