Related papers: The Case for Probe-class NASA Astrophysics Mission…
Starting from 1960s, a great number of missions and experiments have been performed for the study of the high--energy sky. This review gives a wide vision of the most important space missions and balloon experiments that have operated in…
The national space programs have an historic opportunity to help solve the global-scale economic and environmental problems of Earth while becoming more effective at science through the use of space resources. Space programs will be more…
The NASA program in X-ray astronomy has two long term goals: 1) to achieve sufficient angular resolution to image the event horizon of a black hole (0.1 micro arc sec) and 2) to achieve sufficient collecting area (50-150 sq m) and angular…
The time-variable electromagnetic sky has been well-explored at a wide range of wavelengths. Numerous high-energy space missions take advantage of the dark Gamma-ray and X-ray sky and utilize very wide field detectors to provide almost…
Extragalactic astronomy with photons ends at ~0.1 PeV, but we know there are astrophysical sources for seven more decades of energy beyond this. To probe the highest energy sources and particles in the universe, new messengers, such as…
Undergraduate physics and astronomy students are expected to engage with scientific literature as they begin their research careers, but reading comprehension skills are rarely explicitly taught in major courses. We seek to determine the…
Both Phase 1 of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA1) and the full SKA have the potential to dramatically increase the science return from future astrophysics, heliophysics, and especially planetary missions, primarily due to the greater…
A close partnership between people and partially autonomous machines has enabled decades of space exploration. But to further expand our horizons, our systems must become more capable. Increasing the nature and degree of autonomy - allowing…
Astrophysics facilities have been of tremendous importance for planetary science. The flagship space observatory Hubble Space Telescope has produced ground-breaking Solar System science, but when launched it did not even have the capability…
The energy range between about 100 keV and 1 GeV is of interest for a vast class of astrophysical topics. In particular, (1) it is the missing ingredient for understanding extreme processes in the multi-messenger era; (2) it allows…
Some of the most exciting and promising areas of Astronomy research today are found at the boundaries of the discipline: the search for Exoplanets and Multi-Messenger Astronomy. In order to achieve breakthroughs in these research fields…
Over the past decade, sky surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have proven the power of large data sets for answering fundamental astrophysical questions. This observational progress, based on a synergy of advances in telescope…
Abridged: The golden age of astrophysics is upon us with both grand discoveries (extra-solar planets, dark matter, dark energy) and precision cosmology. Fundamental understanding of the working of stars and galaxies is within reach, thanks…
The detection of the accelerated expansion of the Universe has been one of the major breakthroughs in modern cosmology. Several cosmological probes (CMB, SNe Ia, BAO) have been studied in depth to better understand the nature of the…
Fundamental coding and software development skills are increasingly necessary for success in nearly every aspect of astronomical and astrophysical research as large surveys and high resolution simulations become the norm. However,…
We present the mission concept "Mission to Analyze the UltraViolet universE" (MAUVE), a wide-field spectrometer and imager conceived during the inaugural NASA Astrophysics Mission Design School. MAUVE responds to the 2023 Announcement of…
In support of the National Acadamies' Exoplanet Science Strategy, this whitepaper outlines key technology challenges for studying the diversity of worlds in the Galaxy and in searching for habitable planets. Observations of habitable…
We now know that the outer solar system is host to at least six diverse planetary ring systems, each of which is a scientifically compelling target with the potential to inform us about the evolution, history and even the internal structure…
We review some aspects of the current state of data-intensive astronomy, its methods, and some outstanding data analysis challenges. Astronomy is at the forefront of "big data" science, with exponentially growing data volumes and data…
After many years of flying in space primarily for educational purposes, CubeSats - tiny satellites with form factors corresponding to arrangements of "1U" units, or cubes, each 10 cm on a side - have come into their own as valuable…