Related papers: Moonraker -- Enceladus Multiple Flyby Mission
The JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) is an ESA interplanetary spacecraft being developed to perform detailed investigations of the Jupiter system and three of its icy moons: Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. The emphasis will be given on…
The core mass of Saturn is commonly assumed to be 10-25 ME as predicted by interior models with various equations of state (EOSs) and the Voyager gravity data, and hence larger than that of Jupiter (0-10 ME). We here re-analyze Saturn's…
Spacecraft observations of Saturn's rings show evidence of an active aggregation-disaggregation process triggered by periodic influences from the nearby moons. This leads to clumping and break-up of the ring particles at time-scales of the…
Observational data from the Cassini spacecraft are used to obtain a chemical model of ocean water on Enceladus. The model indicates that Enceladus' ocean is a Na-Cl-CO3 solution with an alkaline pH of ~11-12. The dominance of aqueous NaCl…
Comets likely formed in the outer regions of the protosolar nebula where they incorporated and preserved primitive presolar materials, volatiles resident in the outer disk, and more refractory materials from throughout the disk. The return…
Motility is a ubiquitous feature of microbial life on Earth, and is widely regarded as a promising biosignature candidate. In the search for motile organisms, it is therefore valuable to have rough estimates for the number of such microbes…
The interest in returning to the Moon for research and exploration has increased as new tipping point technologies are providing the possibility to do so. One of these initiatives is the Artemis program by NASA, which plans to return humans…
Since the beginning of robotic interplanetary exploration nearly six decades ago, successful atmospheric entry has been accomplished at Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Titan. More entry probe missions are planned to Venus, Titan, and…
The study of planetary atmospheres is critical to our understanding of the origin and evolution of the Solar System. The combined effect of various physical and chemical processes over billions of years have resulted in a variety of…
The Cassini mission provided key measurements needed to determine the absolute age of Saturn's rings, including the extrinsic micrometeoroid flux at Saturn, the volume fraction of non-icy pollutants in the rings, and the total ring mass.…
We investigate the habitability of hypothethical moons orbiting known exoplanets. This study focuses on big, rocky exomoons that are capable of maintaining a significant atmosphere. To determine their habitability, we calculate the incident…
The recently discovered transiting super-Earth LP 890-9 c is potentially one of the best rocky exoplanets for atmospheric characterization. Orbiting an ultracool M-dwarf at the inner edge of the habitable zone, LP 890-9 c offers a new…
NASA's return to the Moon presents unparalleled opportunities to advance high-impact scientific capabilities. At the cutting edge of these possibilities are extremely high-resolution interferometric observations at visible and ultraviolet…
Throughout the history of the solar system, Mars has experienced continuous asteroidal impacts. These impacts have produced impact-generated Mars ejecta, and a fraction of this debris is delivered to Earth as Martian meteorites. Another…
The goal of Project GAUSS is to return samples from the dwarf planet Ceres. Ceres is the most accessible ocean world candidate and the largest reservoir of water in the inner solar system. It shows active cryovolcanism and hydrothermal…
A kinky and clumpy ringlet shares orbit with the moon Pan in the center of the 320-km wide Encke gap in Saturn's rings (Porco et al., 2005). The ringlet is mainly composed of micron-sized particles (Showalter, 1991, Hedman et al., 2011),…
Solid body tides provide key information on the interior structure, evolution, and origin of the planetary bodies. Our Solar system harbours a very diverse population of planetary bodies, including those composed of rock, ice, gas, or a…
Euclid is the second M-class mission of the ESA Cosmic Vision programme, with the principal science goal of studying dark energy. Euclid is also expected to undertake additional Legacy Science programmes. One proposal is the Exoplanet…
In spite of substantial advancements in simulating planet formation, the planet Mercury's diminutive mass, isolated orbit, and the absence of planets with shorter orbital periods in the solar system continue to befuddle numerical accretion…
Volcanism on Venus has never been directly observed, but several measurements indicate present-day activity. Volcanism could potentially play a role in climatic processes on Venus, especially in the sulfur cycle like on Earth. Observation…