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Quasars are often considered to be point-like objects. This is largely true and allows for an excellent alignment of the optical positional reference frame of the ongoing ESA mission Gaia with the International Celestial Reference Frame.…
The search for biosignatures in potentially habitable exoplanets is one of the major astrophysics' drivers for the coming decades, and the prime science goal of the HWO NASA mission, a large UV-Optical-IR space telescope to be launched in…
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…
In the recent past, a comprehensive experimental program has been worked out at the Mainz Energy-Recovery Superconducting Accelerator, MESA, at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Mainz. MESA is a high-intensity, low-energy electron…
Planets in synchronous rotation around low-mass stars are the most salient targets for current ground- and space-based missions to observe and characterize. Such model calculations can help to prioritize targets for observation with current…
This White Paper is a call to action for astronomers to respond to climate change with a large structural transition within our profession. Many astronomers are deeply concerned about climate change and act upon it in their personal and…
The lunar geological record has much to tell us about the earliest history of the Solar System, the origin and evolution of the Earth-Moon system, the geological evolution of rocky planets, and the near-Earth cosmic environment throughout…
With the INTEGRAL observatory, ESA has provided a unique tool to the astronomical community revealing hundreds of sources, new classes of objects, extraordinary views of antimatter annihilation in our Galaxy, and fingerprints of recent…
The key to the exploration of the Ice Giant planets is avoiding cutting edge technology. Complexity produces delay and financial roadblocks. Simple robot scouts can be launched in time to utilize gravity assists from Jupiter in the early…
The upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in less than three years is certain to bring a revolution in our understanding of many area of astrophysics, with one of the key goals being galaxy evolution. As the first…
Solar Orbiter is intended to become ESA's next solar mission in heritage of the successful SOHO project. The scientific objectives of the mission, its design, and its scientific payload are reviewed. Specific emphasis is given to the…
Cosmology is entering a very exciting time in its history, when a wealth of cutting-edge experiments are all starting to collect data, or about to. These experiments aim at addressing some of the most intriguing questions in fundamental…
Imaging devices made from an ionization target layer of amorphous selenium (aSe) coupled to a silicon complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) active pixel array for charge readout are a promising technology for neutrino physics. The…
COMPLETE is a flagship mission concept combining broadband spectroscopic imaging and comprehensive magnetography from multiple viewpoints around the Sun to enable tomographic reconstruction of 3D coronal magnetic fields and associated…
We summarise the scientific and technological aspects of the SAGAS (Search for Anomalous Gravitation using Atomic Sensors) project, submitted to ESA in June 2007 in response to the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 call for proposals. The proposed…
The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) is a NASA Small Explorer (SMEX) satellite mission in development with a planned launch in 2027. COSI is a wide-field gamma-ray telescope designed to survey the entire sky at 0.2-5 MeV. It provides…
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…
PILOT (the Pathfinder for an International Large Optical Telescope is a proposed 2.5 m optical/infrared telescope to be located at DomeC on the Antarctic plateau. The atmospheric conditions at Dome C deliver a high sensitivity, high…
The Gaia space project, planned for launch in 2011, is one of the ESA cornerstone missions, and will provide astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic data of very high quality for about one billion stars brighter than V=20. This will…
The recent discovery of the electromagnetic counterpart of the gravitational wave source GW170817, has demonstrated the huge informative power of multi-messenger observations. During the next decade the nascent field of multi-messenger…