Related papers: Terrestrial Planets Comparative Climatology (TPCC)…
For the first time in human history the possibility of detecting and studying Earth-like planets is on the horizon. Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), with a launch date in the 2015 timeframe, is being planned by NASA to find and characterize…
Provided that sufficient resources are deployed, we can look forward to an extraordinary future in which we will characterize potentially habitable planets. Until now, we have had to base interpretations of observations on habitability…
Soil assessment is important for mobile robot planning and navigation on natural and planetary environments. Terramechanic characteristics can be inferred from the thermal behaviour of soils under the influence of sunlight using remote…
Cloud computing offers an opportunity to run compute-resource intensive climate models at scale by parallelising model runs such that datasets useful to the exoplanet community can be produced efficiently. To better understand the…
As we become aware of Earth's changing climate, and as we discover terrestrial planets in other solar systems, we gain ever more reasons to study the Earth's nearest neighbour and closest sibling, the only Earth-sized planet besides our own…
Terrestrial planets in temperate orbits around very low mass stars are likely to have evolved in a very different way than solar system planets, and in particular Earth. However, because these are the first planets that are and will be…
While recently discovered exotic new planet-types have both challenged our imaginations and broadened our knowledge of planetary system workings, perhaps the most compelling objective of exoplanet science is to detect and characterize…
The objective of this White Paper submitted to ESA's Voyage 2050 call is to get a more holistic knowledge of the dynamics of the Martian plasma system from its surface up to the undisturbed solar wind outside of the induced magnetosphere.…
The Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph (TPF-C) mission presented here is an existence proof for a flagship-class internal coronagraph space mission capable of detecting and characterizing Earth-like planets and planetary systems at…
Wind is the process that connects Mars' climate system. Measurements of Mars atmospheric winds from orbit would dramatically advance our understanding of Mars and help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Multiple instrument…
Why are the terrestrial planets so different? Venus should be the most Earth-like of all our planetary neighbours. Its size, bulk composition and distance from the Sun are very similar to those of the Earth. Its original atmosphere was…
The search for habitable exoplanets and life beyond the Solar System is one of the most compelling scientific opportunities of our time. Nevertheless, the high cost of building facilities that can address this topic and the keen public…
Terrestrial exoplanets are on the verge of joining the ranks of astronomically accessible objects. Interpreting their observable characteristics, and informing decisions on instrument design and use, will hinge on the ability to model these…
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…
We compare the performance of a recently proposed empirical climate model based on astronomical harmonics against all available general circulation climate models (GCM) used by the IPCC (2007) to interpret the 20th century global surface…
We propose a scientific program to complete a census of planets, characterizing their masses, orbital properties, and dynamical histories using continued observations of the Kepler field of view with the Kepler spacecraft in a two reaction…
The two Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) missions aim to perform spectroscopy on extrasolar Earths; TPF-C will operate in visible light, and TPF-I will operate in the mid-infrared. Extrasolar Earths are assumed to be roughly 26 magnitude in…
We advocate for a mission concept study for a space telescope dedicated to solar system science in Earth orbit. Such a study was recommended by the Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS) report "Getting Ready for the Next…
Terraforming Mars is an age old science fiction concept now worth revisiting through the lens of modern science and technology. This document serves as a summary of contemporary ideas about Mars terraforming, prepared for attendees of the…
This whitepaper discusses the diversity of exoplanets that could be detected by future observations, so that comparative exoplanetology can be performed in the upcoming era of large space-based flagship missions. The primary focus will be…