Related papers: Avoiding the "Great Filter": A Projected Timeframe…
This white paper recognizes gaps in observations that will, when addressed, much improve solar radiation hazard and geomagnetic storm forecasting. Radiation forecasting depends on observations of the entire "Solar Radiation Hemisphere" that…
The UN Office of Outer Space Affairs identifies synergy of space development activities and international cooperation through data and infrastructure sharing in their Sustainable Development Goal 17 (SDG17). Current multilateral space…
Are we alone? It is a compelling question that human beings have confronted for centuries. The search for extraterrestrial life is a broad range of quests for finding simple forms of life up to intelligent beings in the Universe. The…
Modern astronomy has finally been able to observe protoplanetary disks in reasonable resolution and detail, unveiling the processes happening during planet formation. These observed processes are understood under the framework of…
This white paper was submitted to NASA's Search For Life Science Analysis Group (SFL-SAG): To ensure that the first mission designed to seek signs of extant life since 1976 is able to produce an unambiguous biological interpretation, the…
Speculation about the existence of advanced forms of life in the Universe and in our galaxy, has been since ever a subject of fascination and discussion in fiction, as well as in astrophysics, biology and philosophy. The well-known Fermi's…
Earth's future detectability depends upon the trajectory of our civilization over the coming centuries. Human civilization is also the only known example of an energy-intensive civilization, so our history and future trajectories provide…
Recent detections of potentially habitable exoplanets around sunlike stars demand increased exploration of the physical conditions that can sustain life, by whatever methods available. Insight into these conditions can be gained by…
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…
Mars is the next destination after Earth to support terrestrial life. Decades of Mars exploration has fascinated space explorers to endeavour for a human expedition. But human Mars enterprise is complicated than conventional mission as the…
With thousands of exoplanets now identified, the characterization of habitable planets and the potential identification of inhabited ones is a major challenge for the coming decades. We review the current working definition of habitable…
We present initial results of an ongoing engineering study on the feasibility of a space mission to the focal region of the solar gravitational lens (SGL). The mission goal is to conduct exoplanet imaging operations at heliocentric…
We updated the agent based Monte Carlo code HERITAGE that simulates human evolution within restrictive environments such as interstellar, sub-light speed spacecraft in order to include the effects of population genetics. We incorporated a…
Human long duration exploration missions (LDEMs) raise a number of technological challenges. This paper addresses the question of the crew autonomy: as the distances increase, the communication delays and constraints tend to prevent the…
We present the first real-time predictions of coronal mass ejection (CME) magnetic structure and resulting geomagnetic impact at Earth for two events using far-upstream observations from Solar Orbiter during March 2024. While our approach…
If life on Earth had to achieve n 'hard steps' to reach humanity's level, then the chance of this event rose as time to the n-th power. Integrating this over habitable star formation and planet lifetime distributions predicts >99% of…
The discovery of extra-solar planets is one of the greatest achievements of modern astronomy. The detection of planets with a wide range of masses demonstrates that extra-solar planets of low mass exist. In this paper we describe a mission,…
Laying the Vision and Voyages (V&V, National Research Council 2011) Decadal Survey 2013-2022 objectives against subsequent budget profiles reveals that separate missions to every desirable target in the Solar System are simply not…
It has been 20 years since planning began for the 1995 United Nations International Conference on Near-Earth Objects. The conference proceedings established the scientific basis for an international organizational framework to support…
As an end-member of terrestrial planet formation, Mercury holds unique clues about the original distribution of elements in the earliest stages of solar system development and how planets and exoplanets form and evolve in close proximity to…