Related papers: A Starshot Communication Downlink
All water-covered rocky planets in the inner habitable zones of solar-type stars will inevitably experience a catastrophic runaway climate due to increasing stellar luminosity and limits to outgoing infrared radiation from wet greenhouse…
The Asteroid Terrestrial impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) system consists of two 0.5m Schmidt telescopes with cameras covering 29 square degrees at plate scale of 1.86 arcsec per pixel. Working in tandem, the telescopes routinely survey the…
The Breakthrough Starshot project aims to send a tiny 2 gram spacecraft to Proxima Centauri propelled by a light sail and powerful Earth-based lasers. We provide two derivations of the laser energy required to propel the spacecraft and give…
The Star Watch extreme-precision astrometry mission (0.1 - 1.0 uas) builds on technology developed, and validated, during the SIM (Space Interferometry Mission) project. The sole science instrument is an optical interferometer with 50-cm…
Starlink is a low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation operated by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) which aims to provide global satellite internet access. Thus far, most photometric observations of Starlink satellites…
The scientific interest in directly image and identifying Earth-like planets within the Habitable Zone (HZ) around nearby stars is driving the design of specialized direct imaging mission such as ACESAT, EXO-C, EXO-S and AFTA-C. The inner…
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, lists the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) as one of its key scientific objectives. In this work, we present a…
We present new, high dynamic range VLA images of the inner jet of the closest radio galaxy, Centaurus A. Over a ten-year baseline we detect apparent sub-luminal motions (v ~ 0.5c) in the jet on scales of hundreds of pc. The inferred speeds…
3I/ATLAS is the third confirmed interstellar object passing through the Solar System. In this work, we conduct narrowband radio technosignature search toward 3I/ATLAS using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) L-band…
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is one of its five key science objectives. We conducted a targeted…
A sub-parsec scale radio counterjet has been detected in the nucleus of the closest radio galaxy, Centaurus A (NGC 5128), with VLBI imaging at 2.3 and 8.4 GHz. This is one of the first detections of a VLBI counterjet and provides new…
The Breakthrough Starshot Initiative is suggested to develop the concept of propelling a nano-scale spacecraft by the radiation pressure of an intense laser beam. If such a nanocraft could be accelerated to 20 percent of light speed, it…
The Centaurus A radio galaxy, due to its proximity, presents itself as one of the few systems that allow the study of relativistic jet outflows at sub-parsec distances from the central supermassive black holes, with high signal to noise. We…
The Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite (ULTRASAT) is a space-borne near UV telescope with an unprecedented large field of view (200 sq. deg.). The mission, led by the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Israel Space Agency in…
In 2025 July, the third-ever interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS, was discovered on its ingress into the Solar System. Similar to the NASA Voyager missions sent in 1977, science probes by extraterrestrial life ("artifact technosignatures") could…
The Breakthrough Starshot Initiative aims to send a gram-scale probe to Proxima Centuri B using a laser-accelerated lightsail traveling at relativistic speeds. Thermal management is a key lightsail design objective because of the intense…
Alpha Centauri A is the closest solar-type star to the Sun and offers an excellent opportunity to detect the thermal emission of a mature planet heated by its host star. The MIRI coronagraph on JWST can search the 1-3 AU (1"-2") region…
We have found that Proxima Centauri, the star closest to our Sun, will pass close to a pair of faint background stars in the next few years. Using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images obtained in 2012 October, we determine that the passage…
Very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations of active galactic nuclei at millimeter wavelengths have the power to reveal the launching and initial collimation region of extragalactic radio jets, down to $10-100$ gravitational…
We have been conducting a search for narrowband radio signals with the L-band receiver (1.15-1.73 GHz) of the 100 m diameter Green Bank Telescope (Margot et al., 2023). So far, we have captured radio emissions from 70,000+ stars and…