Related papers: The LUVOIR Mission Concept Study Interim Report

One of the key goals of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is to directly image about 25 potentially habitable exoplanets and determine their properties. This challenge will require a large survey of nearby, bright stars -- ~100…

NASA's return to the Moon presents unparalleled opportunities to advance high-impact scientific capabilities. At the cutting edge of these possibilities are extremely high-resolution interferometric observations at visible and ultraviolet…

LUCI (Lagrange eUv Coronal Imager) is a solar imager in the Extreme UltraViolet (EUV) that is being developed as part of the Lagrange mission, a mission designed to be positioned at the L5 Lagrangian point to monitor space weather from its…

The ultraviolet (UV) window has been largely unexplored through balloons for astronomy. We discuss here the development of a compact near-UV spectrograph with fiber optics input for balloon ights. It is a modified Czerny-Turner system built…

The Stellar Imager mission concept is a space-based UV/Optical interferometer designed to resolve surface magnetic activity and subsurface structure and flows of a population of Sun-like stars, in order to accelerate the development and…

A proposed Vera C. Rubin Observatory Deep Drilling micro-survey of the Kuiper Belt will investigate key properties of the distant solar system. Utilizing 30 hours of Rubin time across six 5-hour visits over one year starting in summer 2026,…

[NIRSS is one of three concepts that contributed to the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission advocated by the Decadal Survey.] Operating beyond the reaches of the Earth's atmosphere, free of its limiting absorption and…

We present a design for a near-ultraviolet (NUV) imaging instrument which may be flown on a range of available platforms, including high-altitude balloons, nanosatellites, or space missions. Although all current UV space missions adopt a…

Jupiter's moon Io is a highly compelling target for future exploration that offers critical insight into tidal dissipation processes and the geology of high heat flux worlds, including primitive planetary bodies, such as the early Earth,…

In the context of the development of several space mission projects for UV spectropolarimetry at high resolution and over a wide UV wavelength range, such as Arago, Polstar, and Pollux onboard the Habitable Worlds Observatory, we are…

The Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) is a NASA astronomy mission that will explore the 905-1187 A wavelength region at high spectral resolution. Funded by NASA's Explorer Program, this Origins mission is scheduled for a 1999…

NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) concept and the 2020 Decadal Survey's recommendation to develop a large space telescope to "detect and characterize Earth-like extrasolar planets" requires new starlight suppression technologies to…

We discuss scientific, technical and programmatic issues related to the use of an NRO 2.4m telescope for the WFIRST initiative of the 2010 Decadal Survey. We show that this implementation of WFIRST, which we call "NEW WFIRST," would achieve…

We propose SILVIA (Space Interferometer Laboratory Voyaging towards Innovative Applications), a mission concept designed to demonstrate ultra-precision formation flying between three spacecraft separated by 100 m. SILVIA aims to achieve…

An extremely sensitive all-sky survey will be carried out in the millimetre/submillimetre waveband by the forthcoming ESA mission Planck Surveyor. The main scientific goal of the mission is to make very accurate measurements of the spatial…

Technical discussions of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) sensitivity often focus on its effective sensitivity to gravitational waves in a given band; nevertheless, the goal of the LIGO Project is to ``do…

Understanding the solar outer atmosphere requires concerted, simultaneous solar observations from the visible to the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) and soft X-rays, at high spatial resolution (between 0.1" and 0.3"), at high temporal resolution…

This is the report of the Ultraviolet-Optical Working Group (UVOWG) commissioned by NASA to study the scientific rationale for new missions in ultraviolet/optical space astronomy approximately ten years from now, when the Hubble Space…

We present design considerations for a ground-based survey for transiting exoplanets around L and T dwarfs, spectral classes that have yet to be thoroughly probed for planets. We simulate photometry for L and T targets with a variety of…

The purpose of this document is to discuss the scientific case of a space mission to the ice giants Uranus and Neptune and their satellite systems and its relevance to advance our understanding of the ancient past of the Solar System and,…