Related papers: Community Involvement in the WFIRST Exoplanet Micr…

The NSF-sponsored Undergraduate ALFALFA Team (UAT) promotes long-term collaborative research opportunities for faculty and students from 23 U.S. public and private primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) within the context of the…

K2 Campaign 9 (K2C9) offers the first chance to measure parallaxes and masses of members of the large population of free-floating planets (FFPs) that has previously been inferred from measurements of the rate of short-timescale microlensing…

FINESSE, a NASA MIDEX mission in Step 2, would conduct a large, uniform survey of exoplanet atmospheres and create a statistically significant sample for comparative planetology. FINESSE's technical capabilities, driven by a scientific…

The PRobe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics (PRIMA) is a cryogenically-cooled, far-infrared (far-IR) observatory expected to begin serving the astronomical community by early 2030. The mission features two advanced instruments: PRIMAger…

PRIMA (The PRobe for-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics) is a concept for a far-infrared (IR) observatory. PRIMA features a cryogenically cooled 1.8 m diameter telescope and is designed to carry two science instruments enabling ultra-high…

Uncertainty in the initial-final mass relation (IFMR) has long been a problem in understanding the final stages of massive star evolution. One of the major challenges of constraining the IFMR is the difficulty of measuring the mass of…

LOFT (Large Observatory For x-ray Timing) is one of the four missions selected in 2011 for assessment study for the ESA M3 mission in the Cosmic Vision program, expected to be launched in 2024. The LOFT mission will carry two instruments…

By providing sensitive sub-arcsecond images and integral field spectroscopy in the 25 - 400 micron wavelength range, a far-IR interferometer will revolutionize our understanding of planetary system formation, reveal otherwise-undetectable…

Traditional approaches to measuring the stellar mass function (MF) are fundamentally limited because objects are detected based on their luminosity, not their mass. These methods are thereby restricted to luminous and relatively nearby…

The highest priority Planetary Flagship from the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey is the Uranus Orbiter and Probe. This mission enables broad, cross-disciplinary science of an ice giant system, including the planet, moons,…

The James Webb Space Telescope is orders of magnitude more sensitive than any other facility across the near to mid-infrared wavelengths. Many approved programs take advantage of its highly stable point spread function (PSF) to directly…

Transiting exoplanet atmospheric characterization is currently in a golden age as dozens of exoplanet atmospheres are being studied by NASA's Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. This trend is expected to continue with NASA's Pandora…

Microlensing is the most promising method to study the statistical frequency of extra-solar planets orbiting typical (random) stars in the Milky Way, even those several kiloparsecs from Earth. The lensing zone corresponds to orbital…

We present the first study to synthesize results from five different exoplanet surveys using three independent detection methods: microlensing, radial velocity, and direct imaging. The constraints derived herein represent the most…

NASA JPL scientists working on the micro x-ray fluorescence (microXRF) spectroscopy data collected from Mars surface perform data analysis to look for signs of past microbial life on Mars. Their data analysis workflow mainly involves…

LOFT-P is a concept for a NASA Astrophysics Probe-Class (<$1B) X-ray timing mission, based on the LOFT concept originally proposed to ESAs M3 and M4 calls. LOFT-P requires very large collecting area (>6 m^2, >10x RXTE), high time…

We explore the possibility of detecting primordial non-Gaussianity of the local type using weak lensing peak counts. We measure the peak abundance in sets of simulated weak lensing maps corresponding to three models f_NL={0, +100, -100}.…

Among the methods proposed to detect extrasolar planets, microlensing is the only technique that can detect free-floating planets. Free-floating planets are detected through the channel of short-duration isolated lensing events. However, if…

BRITE (BRIght Target Explorer) Constellation, the first nanosatellite mission applied to astrophysical research, is a collaboration among Austria, Canada and Poland. The fleet of satellites (6 launched, 5 functioning) performs precise…

Achieving a complete picture of galaxy evolution is a primary goal of extragalactic astrophysics. To accomplish this ambitious task, a wealth of multi-wavelength surveys have been devoted to assess the cosmic evolution of the cold gas and…