Related papers: The Lynx Mission Concept Study Interim Report

Modern X-ray observatories yield unique insight into the astrophysical time domain. Each X-ray photon can be assigned an arrival time, an energy and a sky position, yielding sensitive, energy-dependent light curves and enabling…

Four ongoing microlensing experiments have produced important new results but also big puzzles, the major one being that the expected classes of lenses cannot account for the observed distribution of time scales. I discuss future…

Understanding the Universe's origins and evolution remains one of the most fundamental challenges in modern cosmology. This white paper explores three key science priorities in this field: unravelling the physics of cosmic inflation,…

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the next-generation gamma-ray observatory, investigating gamma-ray and cosmic ray astrophysics at energies from 20 GeV to more than 300 TeV. The observatory, consisting of large arrays of imaging…

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) produce the highest intrinsic luminosities in the Universe from within a compact region. The central engine is thought to be powered by accretion onto a supermassive black hole. A fraction of this huge release…

In the next 30 years, a new generation of space and ground-based telescopes will permit to obtain multi-frequency observations of faint sources and, for the first time in human history, to achieve a deep, almost synoptical monitoring of the…

Einstein Probe is a small mission dedicated to time-domain high-energy astrophysics. Its primary goals are to discover high-energy transients and to monitor variable objects in the $0.5-4~$keV X-rays, at higher sensitivity by one order of…

This document introduces the exciting and fundamentally new science and astronomy that the European New Gravitational Wave Observatory (NGO) mission (derived from the previous LISA proposal) will deliver. The mission (which we will refer to…

We explore the design of a space mission, Project Lyman, which has the goal of quantifying the ionization history of the universe from the present epoch to a redshift of z ~ 3. Observations from WMAP and SDSS show that before a redshift of…

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is planned to be the next generation ground based observatory for very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray astronomy. Gamma-rays provide a powerful insight into the non-thermal universe and hopefully a unique…

Chronos is our response to ESA's call for white papers to define the science for the future L2, L3 missions. Chronos targets the formation and evolution of galaxies, by collecting the deepest NIR spectroscopic data, from the formation of…

Observations of the gamma-ray sky reveal the most powerful sources and the most violent events in the Universe. While at lower wavebands the observed emission is generally dominated by thermal processes, the gamma-ray sky provides us with a…

FLARE (First Light And Reionization Explorer) is a space mission that will be submitted to ESA (M5 call). Its primary goal (about 80% of lifetime) is to identify and study galaxies that dwell in the universe before the end of the…

In the past few years, there has been a resurgence in studies towards space-based optical/infrared interferometry, particularly with the vision to use the technique to discover and characterise temperate Earth-like exoplanets around solar…

Lynx is one of four large-mission concept studies for NASA's 2020 Decadal survey. The design reference mission includes an X-ray grating spectrometer (XGS) based on critical-angle transmission (CAT) gratings. In the past we studied…

A coming resurgence of super heavy-lift launch vehicles has precipitated an immense interest in the future of crewed spaceflight and even future colonisation efforts. While it is true that a bright future awaits this sector, driven by…

One of the key research themes identified by the Astro2020 decadal survey is Worlds and Suns in Context. The Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite (AXIS) is a proposed NASA APEX mission that will become the prime high-energy instrument for…

Galaxy-scale strong lensing is a powerful tool in Astrophysics and Cosmology, enabling studies of massive galaxies' internal structure, their formation and evolution, stellar initial mass function, and cosmological parameters. In this…

The new frontier of cosmology will be led by three-dimensional surveys of the large-scale structure of the Universe. Based on its all-sky surveys and redshift depth, the SKA is destined to revolutionize cosmology, in combination with future…

The X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) on-board the second large ESA mission ''Athena'' will be a high spatial (5'') and spectral (2.5eV) resolution X-ray imaging spectrometer, operating in the 0.2-12 keV energy band. It will address the…