Related papers: Avoiding the "Great Filter": A Projected Timeframe…
WFIRST is NASA's first flagship mission with pre-defined core science programs to study dark energy and perform a statistical census of wide orbit exoplanets with a gravitational microlensing survey. Together, these programs are expected to…
World ships are hypothetical, large, self-contained spacecraft for crewed interstellar travel, taking centuries to reach other stars. Due to their crewed nature, size, and long trip times, the feasibility of world ships faces an additional…
The Kepler Mission is exploring the diversity of planets and planetary systems. Its legacy will be a catalog of discoveries sufficient for computing planet occurrence rates as a function of size, orbital period, star-type, and insolation…
We study the planet populations in the discovery window of the CoRoT-space-telescope scheduled for launch on December 27th. We base the prediction on `first principles' calculations of planet formation in the framework of the planetesimal…
Planet 9 is an hypothetical object in the outer Solar system, which is as yet undiscovered. It has been speculated that it may be a terrestrial planet or gas/ice giant, or perhaps even a primordial black hole (or dark matter condensate).…
Some attempts to predict the very distant future of Radio Astronomy are given. It is not easy to predict a list of the first priority problems which may appear, but the facilities potential is more predictable. It is suggested, that in…
Space weather observations and modeling at Mars have begun but they must be significantly increased to support the future of Human Exploration on the Red Planet. A comprehensive space weather understanding of a planet without a global…
The level of technological development of any civilization can be gaged in large part by the amount of energy they produce for their use, but also encompasses that civilization's stewardship of their home world. Following the Kardashev…
In this outlook we describe what could be the next steps of the direct characterization of habitable exoplanets after first the medium and large mission projects and investigate the benefits of the spectroscopic and direct imaging…
With the high number of extrasolar planets discovered by now, it becomes possible to constrain theoretical formation models in a statistical sense. This paper is the first in a series in which we carry out a large number of planet…
The search for life on extrasolar planets is based on the assumption that one can screen extrasolar planets for habitability spectroscopically. The first space born instruments able to detect as well as characterize extrasolar planets,…
Nomadic worlds, i.e., objects not gravitationally bound to any star(s), are of great interest to planetary science and astrobiology. They have garnered attention recently due to constraints derived from microlensing surveys and the recent…
We have shown that Earth-mass planets could survive in variously restricted regions of the habitable zones (HZs) of most of a sample of nine of the 102 main-sequence exoplanetary systems confirmed by 19 November 2003. In a preliminary…
The ease of interstellar rocket travel is an issue with implications for the long term fate of our own and other civilizations and for the much-debated number of technological civilizations in the Galaxy. We show that the physical barrier…
Understanding the concept of habitability is related to an evolutionary knowledge of the particular planet-in-question. Additional indications so-called "systemic aspects" of the planetary system as a whole governs a particular planet's…
It is demonstrated that the development of a nuclear fusion rocket engine based on a D $-$ $^{3}$He (Deterium-Helium 3) technology will allow to travel in the solar system and beyond. The Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) is the D $-$…
Beginning in 2012, NASA utilized a strategic process to identify broad societal questions, or grand challenges, that are well suited to the aerospace sector and align with national priorities. This effort generated NASA's first grand…
Mars exploration motivates the search for extraterrestrial life, the development of space technologies, and the design of human missions and habitations. Here we seek new insights and pose unresolved questions relating to the natural…
FLARE (First Light And Reionization Explorer) is a space mission that will be submitted to ESA (M5 call). Its primary goal (about 80% of lifetime) is to identify and study galaxies that dwell in the universe before the end of the…
The prediction that (due to the limited amount of hydrogen available as fuel in the Sun) the future duration of our favourable terrestrial environment will be short (compared with the present age of the Earth) has been interpreted as…