Related papers: Europa Exploration Philosophy
Exoplanetary science has reached a historic moment. The James Webb Space Telescope will be capable of probing the atmospheres of rocky planets, and perhaps even search for biologically produced gases. However this is contingent on…
Uranus and Neptune, and their diverse satellite and ring systems, represent the least explored environments of our Solar System, and yet may provide the archetype for the most common outcome of planetary formation throughout our galaxy. Ice…
Roth et al (2014a) reported evidence for plumes of water venting from a southern high latitude region on Europa - spectroscopic detection of off-limb line emission from the dissociation products of water. Here, we present Hubble Space…
We describe Voyageur, which is an application of experiential search to the domain of travel. Unlike traditional search engines for online services, experiential search focuses on the experiential aspects of the service under consideration.…
Euclid is a space-based optical/near-infrared survey mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) to investigate the nature of dark energy, dark matter and gravity by observing the geometry of the Universe and on the formation of structures…
In contrast to manned missions, the application of autonomous robots for space exploration missions decreases the safety concerns of the exploration missions while extending the exploration distance since returning transportation is not…
The Solar Spectroscopy Explorer (SSE) concept is conceived as a scalable mission, with two to four instruments and a strong focus on coronal spectroscopy. In its core configuration it is a small strategic mission ($250-500M) built around a…
This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the Vega flight computer, and its corresponding ground station developed by CATS, a company producing open-source flight computers and tracking systems tailored for student-made rockets. These…
The icy moon Europa is a primary target for the study of ocean worlds. Its subsurface ocean is expected to be subject to asymmetries on global scales (tidal deformation) and local scales (chaos regions, fractures). Here, we investigate the…
Exploring the Universe is one of the great unifying themes of humanity. Part of this endeavour is the search for extraterrestrial life. But how likely is it that we will find life, or that if we do it will be similar to ourselves? And…
We investigate looking for black hole starships using very high energy gamma ray telescopes. We find they would be above the threshhold of visibility although there are many unknown factors.
Regular, low-cost Decadal-class science missions to planetary destinations will be enabled by high-{\Delta}V small spacecraft, such as the high-energy Photon, and small launch vehicles, such as Electron, to support expanding opportunities…
Rocket technology, originally developed for military applications, has provided a low-cost observing platform to carry critical and rapid-response scientific investigations for over 70 years. Even with the development of launch vehicles…
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…
Design space exploration is commonly performed in embedded system, where the architecture is a complicated piece of engineering. With the current trend of many-core systems, design space exploration in general-purpose computers can no…
Small satellite platforms with high performance avionics are becoming more affordable. So far, with a few exceptions, small satellites have been mainly dedicated to earth observation. However, astronomy is a fascinating field with a history…
Planetary exploration robots must navigate uneven terrain while building reliable maps for space missions. However, most existing methods incorporate traversability constraints but may not handle high uncertainty in elevation estimates near…
Europa's tenuous atmosphere results from sputtering of the surface. The trace element composition of its atmosphere is therefore related to the composition of Europa's surface. Magnesium salts are often invoked to explain Galileo Near…
We have found many Earth-sized worlds but we have no way of determining if their surfaces are Earth-like. This makes it impossible to quantitatively compare habitability, and pretending we can risks damaging the field.
Cosmic Explorer (CE) is a proposed next generation gravitational-wave observatory that would be sited in the United States. As of 2025, CE is in its design phase, with plans to begin operations in the 2030s together with the Einstein…