Related papers: OSIRIS-REx Sample Analysis Plan -- Revision 3.0
RISTRETTO is a visible high-resolution spectrograph fed by an extreme adaptive optics (XAO) system, to be proposed as a visitor instrument on ESO VLT. The main science goal of RISTRETTO is the detection and atmospheric characterization of…
CoRoT was the first space mission dedicated to exoplanet detection. Operational between 2007 and 2012, this mission discovered 37 transiting planets, including CoRoT-7b, the first terrestrial exoplanet with a measured size. The precision of…
The study of extra-solar planets, or simply, exoplanets, planets outside our own Solar System, is fundamentally a grand quest to understand our place in the Universe. Discoveries in the last two decades have re-defined our understanding of…
The stability and topological structure of equilibrium points in the potential field of the asteroid 101955 Bennu have been investigated with a variable density and rotation period. A dimensionless quantity is introduced for the…
Exploration of asteroids and comets can give insight into the origins of the solar system and can be instrumental in planetary defence and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Asteroids, due to their low gravity are a challenging target for…
Context. The near-Earth orbital space is shared by natural objects and space debris that can be temporarily captured in geocentric orbits. Short-term natural satellites are often called mini-moons. Reflectance spectroscopy can determine the…
We present the JWST Emission Line Survey (JELS), a JWST imaging programme exploiting the wavelength coverage and sensitivity of NIRCam to extend narrow-band rest-optical emission line selection into the epoch of reionization (EoR) for the…
Ariel, the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, was adopted as the fourth medium-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision programme to be launched in 2029. During its 4-year mission, Ariel will study what exoplanets are…
The New Horizons mission was launched on 2006 January 19, and the spacecraft is heading for a flyby encounter with the Pluto system in the summer of 2015. The challenges associated with sending a spacecraft to Pluto in less than 10 years…
The main goal of the Pennsylvania - Torun Planet Search (PTPS) is detection and characterization of planets around evolved stars using the high-accuracy radial velocity (RV) technique. The project is performed with the 9.2 m Hobby-Eberly…
We present new reflection models specifically tailored to model the X-ray radiation reprocessed in accretion disks around neutron stars, in which the primary continuum is characterized by a single temperature blackbody spectrum, emitted…
This study presents a systematic approach to optimize the scheduling of exoplanet observations using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), focusing on targets discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). We developed a…
China plans to return samples from the near-Earth asteroid (469219) Kamo'oalewa, which we previously identified as an LL-chondrite-compositional, highly space-weathered object with fine-grained regolith. In this study, we developed 10 mL of…
With the advent of more and deeper sky surveys, the discovery of interstellar small objects entering into the Solar System has been finally possible. In October 19, 2017, using observations of the Pan-STARRS survey, a fast moving object,…
We present recent improvements in the simulation of regolith sampling processes in microgravity using the numerical particle method smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH). We use an elastic-plastic soil constitutive model for large deformation…
We report the H, C, and N isotopic compositions of microscale (0.2 to 2$\mu$m) organic matter in samples of asteroid Ryugu and the Orgueil CI carbonaceous chondrite. Three regolith particles of asteroid Ryugu, returned by the Hayabusa2…
Previous attempts have been made to characterize the atmospheres of directly imaged planets at low-resolution (R$\sim$10s-100s), but the presence of clouds has often led to degeneracies in the retrieved atmospheric abundances with cloud…
The {\it Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite} (TESS) searches for planets transiting bright and nearby stars using high-cadence, large-scale photometric observations. Full Frame Images provided by the TESS mission include large number of…
The radio tracking apparatus of the New Horizons spacecraft, currently traveling to the Pluto system where its arrival is scheduled for July 2015, should be able to reach an accuracy of 10 m (range) and 0.1 mm s^-1 (range-rate) over…
[Full abstract in the paper] We aim to better constrain the atmospheric properties of the directly imaged exoplanet 51~Eri~b by using a retrieval approach on higher signal-to-noise data than previously reported. In this context, we also…