Related papers: Planetary Exploration Horizon 2061 Report Chapter …
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…
Our understanding of the processes that are relevant to the formation and maintenance of habitable planetary systems is advancing at a rapid pace, both from observation and theory. The present review focuses on recent research that bears on…
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 advocate for establishing key scientific priorities for the future of Mercury exploration, including the development of specific science goals for a landed mission. We support the Mercury science community in fostering closer…
In this paper, we assess the scientific promise and technology feasibility of distributed instruments for planetary science. A distributed instrument is an instrument designed to collect spatially and temporally correlated data from…
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…
The advent of experimental science facilities-instruments and observatories, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, and the upcoming Large Synoptic Survey Telescope-has brought about…
The global climate crisis poses new risks to humanity, and with them, new challenges to the practices of professional astronomy. Avoiding the more catastrophic consequences of global warming by more than 1.5 degrees requires an immediate…
Over the past century, major advances in astronomy and astrophysics have been largely driven by improvements in instrumentation and data collection. With the amassing of high quality data from new telescopes, and especially with the advent…
Advancements in our understanding of exoplanetary atmospheres, from massive gas giants down to rocky worlds, depend on the constructive challenges between observations and models. We are now on a clear trajectory for improvements in…
Powerful new observational facilities will come online over the next decade, enabling a number of discovery opportunities in the "Cosmic Frontier", which targets understanding of the physics of the early universe, dark matter and dark…
Far-infrared astronomy has advanced rapidly since its inception in the late 1950's, driven by a maturing technology base and an expanding community of researchers. This advancement has shown that observations at far-infrared wavelengths are…
We make a case for "planetary computing" -- infrastructure to handle the ingestion, transformation, analysis and publication of global data products for furthering environmental science and enabling better informed policy-making. We draw on…
The SKA will be transformational for many areas of science, but in particular for the study of neutron stars and their usage as tools for fundamental physics in the form of radio pulsars. Since the last science case for the SKA, numerous…
This chapter reviews various methods of detecting planetary companions to stars from an observational perspective, focusing on radial velocities, astrometry, direct imaging, transits, and gravitational microlensing. For each method, this…
The existence, properties, and dynamics of the dark sectors of our universe pose fundamental challenges to our current model of physics, and large-scale astronomical surveys may be our only hope to unravel these long-standing mysteries. In…
Solar sails can play a critical role in enabling solar and heliophysics missions. Solar sail technology within NASA is currently at 80% of TRL-6, suitable for an in-flight technology demonstration. It is conceivable that an initial…
Over the past decade, research in resolved stellar populations has made great strides in exploring the nature of dark matter, in unraveling the star formation, chemical enrichment, and dynamical histories of the Milky Way and nearby…
By the 2040s, the exoplanet field will have moved from the discovery of a few thousand planets to hundreds of thousands, thanks to Gaia DR5, TESS, PLATO, Roman, and their successors. At that stage, the key bottleneck will no longer be…
Future short or long-term space missions require a new generation of monitoring and diagnostic systems due to communication impasses as well as limitations in specialized crew and equipment. Machine learning supported diagnostic systems…