Related papers: Volatile Sample Return in the Solar System
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…
Recent discoveries imply that Early Mars was habitable for life-as-we-know-it; that Enceladus might be habitable; and that many stars have Earth-sized exoplanets whose insolation favors surface liquid water. These exciting discoveries make…
Exploration of terrestrial planets such as Mars are conducted using orbiters, landers and rovers. Cameras and instruments onboard orbiters have enabled global mapping of Mars at low spatial resolution. Landers and rovers such as the Mars…
We analyse the potential of the electric solar wind sail for solar system space missions. Applications studied include fly-by missions to terrestrial planets (Venus, Mars and Phobos, Mercury) and asteroids, missions based on non-Keplerian…
What kind of environment may exist on terrestrial planets around other stars? In spite of the lack of direct observations, it may not be premature to speculate on exoplanetary climates, for instance to optimize future telescopic…
Recent and upcoming stabilized spectrographs are pushing the frontier for Doppler spectroscopy to detect and characterize low-mass planets. Specifications for these instruments are so impressive that intrinsic stellar variability is…
A potential Mars Sample Return (MSR) architecture is being jointly studied by NASA and ESA. As currently envisioned, the MSR campaign consists of a series of 3 missions: sample cache, fetch and return to Earth. In this paper, we focus on…
Volatiles are compounds with low sublimation temperatures, and they make up most of the condensible mass in typical planet-forming environments. They consist of relatively small, often hydrogenated, molecules based on the abundant elements…
This brief review focuses on methods and applications of modeling exoplanetary atmospheres. We discuss various kinds of state of the art self-consistent and retrieval models in 1D and multi-D with a focus on open questions and short- and…
As we prepare for the next planetary mission charged with finding life beyond Earth, the Astrobiology community must continue to improve its understanding of what constitutes a biosignature, through the use of planetary analog samples. The…
The space challenges do exist at every stride on a human expedition to Mars that arise due to galactic natural phenomena and artificial technologies. This paper emphasizes on Mars orbital and planetary challenges encountered from orbit to…
The satellites of extrasolar planets (exomoons) have been recently proposed as astrobiological targets. Since giant planets in the habitable zone are thought to have migrated there, it is possible that they may have captured a former…
Planetary Climate Models (PCMs) are developed to explore planetary climates other than the Earth. Therefore, the methods implemented need to be suitable for a large diversity of conditions. Every planet with a significant atmosphere has…
The successes of previous and current Mars rovers have encouraged space agencies worldwide to pursue additional planetary exploration missions with more ambitious navigation goals. For example, NASA's planned Mars Sample Return mission will…
The recently discovered first high velocity hyperbolic objects passing through the Solar System, 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, have raised the question about near term missions to Interstellar Objects. In situ spacecraft exploration of these…
Understanding planet formation requires robust population studies, which are designed to reveal trends in planet properties. In this work, we aim to determine if different methods for selecting populations of exoplanets for atmospheric…
This article reviews the concepts and methods of variational path sampling. These methods allow computational studies of rare events in systems driven arbitrarily far from equilibrium. Based upon a statistical mechanics of trajectory space…
The lunar geological record has much to tell us about the earliest history of the Solar System, the origin and evolution of the Earth-Moon system, the geological evolution of rocky planets, and the near-Earth cosmic environment throughout…
With the advanced capabilities of ground- and space-based telescopes, exoplanet science is beginning to characterize the physics and chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres. However, interpreting exoplanet observations requires sophisticated…
A planetary system can undergo multiple episodes of intense dynamical activities throughout its life, resulting in the production of star-grazing planetesimals (or exocomets) and pollution of the host star. Such activity is especially…