Related papers: GAUSS -- A Sample Return Mission to Ceres
Endurance is a mission concept to explore and ultimately return samples from the Moon's largest and oldest impact basin, South Pole-Aitken (SPA). SPA holds the answers to many outstanding planetary science questions, including the earliest…
For over half a century, scientists have contemplated the potential existence of life within the clouds of Venus. Unknown chemistry leaves open the possibility that certain regions of the Venusian atmosphere are habitable. In situ…
Ceres, the dwarf planet in the main asteroid belt, hosts heavily cratered surfaces where craters are continuously eroded mainly due to impact bombardment with a limited influence by non-impact processes. Over continuous bombardment, such…
The detection of young transiting exoplanets represents a new frontier in our understanding of planet formation and evolution. For the population of observed close-in sub-Neptunes, two proposed formation pathways can reproduce their…
Despite great advances in our understanding of the formation of the Solar System, the evolution of the Earth, and the chemical basis for life, we are not much closer than the ancient Greeks to an answer of whether life has arisen and…
To date, the most widespread scenario is that the Earth originated without water and was brought to the planet mainly due to impacts by wet asteroids coming from further out in space. However, many uncertainties remain regarding the exact…
Identifying the source of Earth's water is central to understanding the origins of life-fostering environments and to assessing the prevalence of such environments in space. Water throughout the solar system exhibits deuterium-to-hydrogen…
Ancient hydrology is recorded by sedimentary rocks on Mars. The most voluminous sedimentary rocks that formed during Mars' Hesperian period are sulfate-rich rocks, explored by the $Opportunity$ rover from 2004-2012 and soon to be…
Centaurs are solar system objects with orbits situated among the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune. Centaurs represent one of the sources of Near-Earth Objects. Thus, it is crucial to understand their orbital evolution which in some cases might…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets transiting bright and nearby stars. TESS has been selected by NASA for launch in 2017 as an Astrophysics Explorer mission. The spacecraft will be placed into a highly…
From an astrobiological point of view, special attention has been paid to the probability of habitable planets in extrasolar systems. The purpose of this study is to constrain a possible range of the mass of a terrestrial planet that can…
Water is fundamental to our understanding of the evolution of planetary systems and the delivery of volatiles to the surfaces of potentially habitable planets. Yet, we currently have essentially no facilities capable of observing this key…
It is often presumed, that life evolves relatively fast on planets with clement conditions, at least in its basic forms, and that extended periods of habitability are subsequently needed for the evolution of higher life forms. Many planets…
Over the years, energy has become vital for humans, enabling us to comfort, leisure, mobility and other factors. The quest for cheap energy sources, renewable and clean has grown in recent years, mainly for the reduction of effects that…
In the course of the selection of the scientific themes for the second and third L-class missions of the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program of the European Space Agency, the exploration of the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune was defined…
The depletion and variations of groundwater storage~(GWS) are of critical importance for sustainable groundwater management. In this work, we use Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) to estimate variations in the terrestrial…
The Origins Space Telescope (Origins) is one of four science and technology definition studies selected by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in preparation of the 2020 Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal survey in the US.…
We use the clathrate hydrate trapping theory (Lunine & Stevenson 1985) and the gas drag formalism of Weidenschilling (1977) to calculate the composition of ices incorporated in the interior of Ceres. In the spirit of the work of Cyr et al.…
The search for habitable planets like Earth around other stars fulfils an ancient imperative to understand our origins and place in the cosmos. The past decade has seen the discovery of hundreds of planets, but nearly all are gas giants…
On February 13th 2012, the LARES satellite of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) was launched into orbit with the qualification flight of the new VEGA launcher of the European Space Agency (ESA). The payload was released very accurately in the…