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While there have been far fewer missions to the outer Solar System than to the inner Solar System, spacecraft destined for the giant planets have conducted a wide range of fundamental investigations, returning data that continues to reshape…
Exploration of terrestrial planets such as Mars are conducted using orbiters, landers and rovers. Cameras and instruments onboard orbiters have enabled global mapping of Mars at low spatial resolution. Landers and rovers such as the Mars…
We used high-precision radial velocity measurements of FGKM stars to determine the occurrence of giant planets as a function of orbital separation spanning 0.03-30 au. Giant planets are more prevalent at orbital distances of 1-10 au…
The historical development of ground based astronomical telescopes leads us to expect that space-based astronomical telescopes will need to be operational for many decades. The exchange of scientific instruments in space will be a…
Currently, industrial sectors are transforming their business processes into e-services and component-based architectures to build flexible, robust, and scalable systems, and reduce integration-related maintenance and development costs.…
Mars is the next frontier for the space explorers to demonstrate the extent of human presence in space beyond low-earth orbit. Both government and private space industries have been fascinated by Mars quest to attempt a crewed expedition to…
We should be in a golden age of scientific discovery, given that we have more data and more compute power available than ever before, plus a new generation of algorithms that can learn effectively from data. But paradoxically, in many…
Giant collisions can account for Uranus's and Neptune's large obliquities, yet generating two planets with widely different tilts and strikingly similar spin rates is a low-probability event. Trapping into a secular spin-orbit resonance, a…
One important question for science and society is how to best promote scientific progress. Inspired by the great success of Hilbert's famous set of problems, the FuturICT project tries to stimulate and focus the efforts of many scientists…
Go-Explore is a powerful family of algorithms designed to solve hard-exploration problems built on the principle of archiving discovered states, and iteratively returning to and exploring from the most promising states. This approach has…
Open Science has been a rising theme in the landscape of science policy in recent years. The goal is to make research that emerges from publicly funded science to become findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) for use by…
A solar sail propelled small satellite mission concept to intercept and potentially rendezvous with newly discovered transient interstellar objects (ISOs) is described. The mission concept derives from the proposal for a technology…
The history of science reveals that major discoveries are not predictable. Naively, one might conclude therefore that it is not possible to artificially cultivate an environment that promotes discoveries. I suggest instead that open…
One of the greatest difficulties that space exploration faces is the lack of technology necessary to establish large volumes of habitable spaces on site. Both transporting the pre-built enclosures or transporting the equipment necessary for…
Safe, reliable navigation in extreme, unfamiliar terrain is required for future robotic space exploration missions. Recent generative-AI methods learn semantically aware navigation policies from large, cross-embodiment datasets, but offer…
This white paper proposes that AMBITION, a Comet Nucleus Sample Return mission, be a cornerstone of ESA's Voyage 2050 programme. We summarise some of the most important questions still open in cometary science after the successes of the…
Our ability to explore the cosmos by direct contact has been limited to a small number of lunar and interplanetary missions. However, the NASA Starlight program points a path forward to send small, relativistic spacecraft far outside our…
A handful of planetary systems hosting a Hot Jupiter have been subsequently found to also host long-period giant planets. These ``cold Jupiters,'' giant planets residing beyond the snow line ($\sim$3\,au), play an important role in the…
Civilization cannot sustain an exponential growth for long time even when neglecting numerous laws of physics! In this paper, we examine what are fundamental obstacles to long term survival of a civilization and its possibility to colonize…
Aerocapture is an orbit insertion technique which uses atmospheric drag from a single pass to decelerate a spacecraft. Compared to conventional propulsive insertion, aerocapture can impart large velocity changes to the spacecraft with…