Related papers: A Starshot Communication Downlink
Centaurus A is the closest radio-loud active galaxy. Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) enables us to study the jet-counterjet system on milliarcsecond (mas) scales, providing essential information for jet emission and propagation…
Using Chandra ACIS-S, we have obtained imaging Xray spectrophotometry of the Pluto system in support of the New Horizons flyby on 14 July 2015. 174 ksec of observations were obtained on 4 visits in Feb 2014 to Aug 2015. We measured a net…
The jet-counterjet system of the closest radio-loud active galaxy Centaurus A (Cen A) can be studied with Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) on unprecedented small linear scales of ~0.018pc. These high-resolution observations provide…
Proxima Centauri is known to host an earth-like planet in its habitable zone; very recently a second candidate planet was proposed based on radial velocities. At quadrature, the expected projected separation of this new candidate is larger…
The solar photon pressure provides a viable source of thrust for spacecraft in the solar system. Theoretically it could also enable interstellar missions, but an extremely small mass per cross section area is required to overcome the solar…
Building on a preliminary paper design of a downlink from a swarm of low-mass interstellar probes for returning scientific data from the vicinity of Proxima Centauri, the most critical technology issues are summarized, and their…
Having achieved 'first-light' right before the opening ceremony on September 25, 2016, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) is being busily commissioned. Its innovative design requires ~1000 points to be measured…
Proxima Centauri has become the subject of intense study since the radial-velocity discovery by Anglada-Escud\'e et al. 2016 of a planet orbiting this nearby M-dwarf every ~ 11.2 days. If Proxima Centauri b transits its host star,…
The StarLight program conceptualizes fast interstellar travel via small wafer satellites (wafersats) that are propelled by directed energy. This process is wildly different from traditional space travel and trades large and slow spacecraft…
We propose to search for biosignatures in the spectra of reflected light from about 100 Earth-sized planets that are already known to be orbiting in their habitable zones (HZ). For a sample of G and K type hosts, most of these planets will…
Results from exoplanet surveys indicate that small planets (super-Earth size and below) are abundant in our Galaxy. However, little is known about their interiors and atmospheres. There is therefore a need to find small planets transiting…
Imaging the direct light signal from a faint exoplanet against the overwhelming glare of its host star presents one of the fundamental challenges to modern astronomical instrumentation. Achieving sufficient signal-to-noise for detection by…
The analysis of Proxima Centauri's radial velocities recently led Anglada-Escud\'e et al. (2016) to claim the presence of a low mass planet orbiting the Sun's nearest star once every 11.2 days. Although the a-priori probability that Proxima…
As part of NASA's mission to explore habitable planets orbiting nearby stars, this paper explores the detection and characterization capabilities of a 4-m space telescope plus 50-m starshade located at the Earth-Sun L2 point, a.k.a. the New…
The light from a source at a distance d will arrive at detectors separated by 100 AU at times that differ by as much as 120 (d/100 Mpc)^{-1} nanoseconds because of the curvature of the wavefront. At gigahertz frequencies, the arrival time…
For the first time, systematic studies of dwarf galaxies are being conducted throughout the Local Volume, including the dwarf satellites of the nearby giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128). Given Centaurus As mass (roughly ten…
In the cm-wavelength range, an extraterrestrial electromagnetic narrow band (sine wave) beacon is an excellent choice to get alien attention across interstellar distances because 1) it is not strongly affected by interstellar /…
For microlensing case angular distances between images or typical astrometric shifts due to microlensing are about $10^{-5}-10^{-6} \mu as$. Such an angular resolution will be reached with the space space--ground interferometer Radioastron.…
As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft exits the Solar System bound for interstellar space, it has traveled so far that the nearest stars have shifted markedly from their positions seen from Earth. We demonstrated this by imaging the Proxima…
Discovery of pulsars is one of the main goals for large radio telescopes. The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), that incorporates an L-band 19-beam receiver with a system temperature of about 20~K, is the most…