Related papers: The Lynx Mission Concept Study Interim Report
ESA recently called for new "Science Ideas" to be investigated in terms of feasibility and technological developments -- for technologies not yet sufficiently mature. These ideas may in the future become candidates for M or L class missions…
We describe updated scientific goals for the wide-field, millimeter-wave survey that will be produced by the Simons Observatory (SO). Significant upgrades to the 6-meter SO Large Aperture Telescope (LAT) are expected to be complete by 2028,…
This is a white paper submitted in response to the call from the Astro2020 Decadal Survey Committee. We outline the scientific progress that will be made in the next few decades in the study of supernova remnants in the X-ray band, using…
A new mission about twenty years after Gaia with similar astrometric performance would be important for all branches of astronomy. The two missions together would, e.g., give much more accurate motions of the common objects due to the large…
LOFT is one of the four medium mission candidates (M3), selected by ESA in the framework of the Cosmic Vision Programme (2015-2025), for feasibility study. If approved by ESA in 2014, its launch is foreseen in 2022-2024. LOFT is being…
The discovery of extra-solar planets is one of the greatest achievements of modern astronomy. There are now more than 200 such objects known, and the recent detection of planets with masses approximately 5 times that of Earth demonstrates…
White dwarfs, neutron stars and stellar mass black holes are key laboratories to study matter in most extreme conditions of gravity and magnetic field. The unprecedented effective area of Athena+ will allow us to advance our understanding…
The outer solar system provides a unique, quiet vantage point from which to observe the universe around us, where measurements could enable several niche astrophysical science cases that are too difficult to perform near Earth. NASA's New…
LOFT, the Large Observatory For X-ray Timing, is one of five ESA M3 candidate missions. It will address the Cosmic Vision theme: "Matter under Extreme Conditions". By coupling for the first time a huge collecting area for the detection of…
The Arcanum mission is a proposed L-class spacecraft that highlights the revolutionary approach which can now be taken to future space mission design. Using the case of the SpaceX Starship vehicle and in particular the high mass and volume…
Line-Intensity Mapping (LIM) has emerged as a powerful technique for studying large-scale structure and the high-redshift universe, enabling three-dimensional maps of line emission across vast cosmological volumes. In this review, we…
Recent X-ray observations have had a major impact on topics ranging from protostars to cosmology. They have also drawn attention to important and general physical processes that currently limit our understanding of thermal and nonthermal…
Strong gravitational lensing offers a powerful and direct probe of dark matter, galaxy evolution and cosmology, yet strong lenses are rare: only 1 in roughly 10,000 massive galaxies can lens a background source into multiple images. The…
LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, will usher in a new era in gravitational-wave astronomy. As the first anticipated space-based gravitational-wave detector, it will expand our view to the millihertz gravitational-wave sky, where…
The Chandra Multiwavength Plane (ChaMPlane) Survey of the galactic plane incorporates serendipitous sources from selected Chandra pointings in or near the galactic plane (b < 12deg; >20 ksec; lack of bright diffuse or point sources) to…
The concept for Ravens satellite mission was proposed in response to a CSA AO for potential Canadian mission contributions to the International Living With a Star (ILWS) program. Ravens was conceived of to fill an important gap in the ILWS…
Supernova remnants serve as nearby laboratories relevant to many areas in Astrophysics, from stellar and galaxy evolution to extreme astrophysics and the formation of the heavy elements in the Universe. The Chandra X-ray mission has enabled…
The Line Emission Mapper (LEM) is an X-ray Probe for the 2030s that will answer the outstanding questions of the Universe's structure formation. It will also provide transformative new observing capabilities for every area of astrophysics,…
There has never been a more exciting time in the overlapping areas of nuclear physics, particle physics and relativistic astrophysics than today. Orbiting observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope, Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE),…
SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) ( http://spherex.caltech.edu ) is a proposed all-sky spectroscopic survey satellite designed to address all three science goals in NASA's…