Related papers: Sky visibility analysis for astrophysical data ret…
Planetary bodies such as asteroids, comets, and planetary moons are high-value science targets as they hold important information about the formation and evolution of our solar system. However, due to their low-gravity, variable sizes and…
The primary instrument of the proposed EXIST mission is a coded mask high energy telescope (the HET), that must have a wide field of view and extremely good sensitivity. It will be crucial to minimize systematic errors so that even for very…
We present a new space mission concept that is capable of finding, detecting, and tracking 90% of near-Earth objects (NEO) with H magnitude of $\rm H\leq22$ (i.e., $\sim$140 m in size) that are potentially hazardous to the Earth. The new…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets transiting bright and nearby stars. TESS has been selected by NASA for launch in 2017 as an Astrophysics Explorer mission. The spacecraft will be placed into a highly…
Since the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015, gravitational-wave astronomy has emerged as a rapidly advancing field that holds great potential for studying the cosmos, from probing the properties of black holes to testing the…
The emergence of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations dedicated to positioning applications holds the promise of improving the capabilities of existing Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). However, the absence of…
Gravitational waves (GWs) directly measure the luminosity distance to the merger, which, when combined with an independent measurement of the source's redshift, provides a novel probe of cosmology. The proposed next generation of…
The precise astrometric observation of small near-Earth objects (NEOs) is an important observational research topic in the astrometric discipline, which greatly promotes multidisciplinary research, such as the origin and evolution of the…
THESEUS is one of the three missions selected by ESA as fifth medium class mission (M5) candidates in its Cosmic Vision science program, currently under assessment in a phase A study with a planned launch date in 2032. THESEUS is designed…
Virtual Super-resolution Optics with Reconfigurable Swarms (VISORS) is a distributed telescope mission for high-resolution imaging of the Sun using two 6U CubeSats flying in formation in a Sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit. An optics…
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information towards understanding the structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the short-period or low-periastron distance regimes…
A major goal of modern astrophysics is to understand the processes by which the universe evolved from its initial simplicity, as seen in measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background, to the universe we see today, with complexity on all…
The BRIght Target Explorer (BRITE) Constellation is the first nanosatellite mission applied to astrophysical research. Five satellites in low-Earth orbits perform precise optical two-colour photometry of the brightest stars in the night…
The detection of gravitational waves and neutrinos from astrophysical sources with gamma-ray counterparts officially started the era of Multi-Messenger Astronomy. Their transient and extreme nature implies that monitoring the VHE sky is…
Observations of the gamma-ray sky reveal the most powerful sources and the most violent events in the Universe. While at lower wavebands the observed emission is generally dominated by thermal processes, the gamma-ray sky provides us with a…
Mergers of binary neutron stars (BNSs) emit signals in both the gravitational-wave (GW) and electromagnetic (EM) spectra. Famously, the 2017 multi-messenger observation of GW170817 led to scientific discoveries across cosmology, nuclear…
THESEUS is a medium size space mission of the European Space Agency, currently under evaluation for a possible launch in 2032. Its main objectives are to investigate the early Universe through the observation of gamma-ray bursts and to…
Photometric light curves suffer from fundamental degeneracies that limit surface information recovery. We demonstrate that astrometry enables access to complementary information through photocentre variations induced by rotating surface…
This paper develops a general observing strategy for missions performing all-sky surveys, where a single spacecraft maps the celestial sphere subject to realistic constraints. The strategy is flexible such that targeted observations and…
Gamma-ray astronomy is a branch whose potential has not yet been fully exploited. The observations of elemental and isotopic abundances in supernova (SN) explosions are key probes not only of the stellar structure and evolution but also for…