Related papers: Venus
The Hubble Space Telescope has produced astonishing science over the past thirty years. Hubble's productivity can continue to soar for years to come provided some worn out components get upgraded. While powerful new ground-based and space…
We now know that the outer solar system is host to at least six diverse planetary ring systems, each of which is a scientifically compelling target with the potential to inform us about the evolution, history and even the internal structure…
Thanks to the Cassini-Huygens mission, Titan, the pale orange dot of Pioneer and Voyager encounters has been revealed to be a dynamic, hydrologically-shaped, organic-rich ocean world offering unparalleled opportunities to explore prebiotic…
Venus is Earth's sister planet, with similar mass and density but an uninhabitably hot surface, an atmosphere with a water activity 50-100 times lower than anywhere on Earths' surface, and clouds believed to be made of concentrated sulfuric…
This book chapter, Saturn's Polar Atmosphere, is to be published by Cambridge University Press as part of a multi-volume work edited by Kevin Baines, Michael Flasar, Norbert Krupp, and Thomas Stallard, entitled "Saturn in the 21st Century."…
A key item of interest for planetary scientists and astronomers is the habitable zone, or the distance from a host star where a terrestrial planet can maintain necessary temperatures in order to retain liquid water on its surface. However,…
Venus's past climate evolution is uncertain. General circulation model simulations permit a habitable climate as late as ~0.7 Ga, and there is suggestive-albeit inconclusive-evidence for previous liquid water from surface geomorphology and…
Terrestrial exoplanets orbiting within or near their host stars' habitable zone are potentially apt for life. It has been proposed that time-series measurements of reflected starlight from such planets will reveal their rotational period,…
The search for habitable planets like Earth around other stars fulfils an ancient imperative to understand our origins and place in the cosmos. The past decade has seen the discovery of hundreds of planets, but nearly all are gas giants…
Exoplanets are now being discovered in profusion. However, to understand their character requires spectral models and data. These elements of remote sensing can yield temperatures, compositions, and even weather patterns, but only if…
The recent candidate detection of ~1 ppb of phosphine in the middle atmosphere of Venus is so unexpected that it requires an exhaustive search for explanations of its origin. Phosphorus-containing species have not been modelled for Venus'…
Firstly identified in images from JAXA's orbiter Akatsuki, the cloud discontinuity of Venus is a planetary-scale phenomenon known to be recurrent since, at least, the 1980s. Interpreted as a new type of Kelvin wave, this disruption is…
Over the past three decades, we have witnessed one of the great revolutions in our understanding of the cosmos - the dawn of the Exoplanet Era. Where once we knew of just one planetary system (the Solar system), we now know of thousands,…
We review the importance of recent UV observations of solar system targets and discuss the need for further measurements, instrumentation and laboratory work in the coming decade. In the past decade, numerous important advances have been…
Significant advances in the discovery and characterization of the planetary systems of nearby stars can be accomplished with a moderate aperture high performance coronagraphic space mission that could be started in the next decade. Its…
In the next 30 years, a new generation of space and ground-based telescopes will permit to obtain multi-frequency observations of faint sources and, for the first time in human history, to achieve a deep, almost synoptical monitoring of the…
As a free, intensive, weakly interacting, and well directional messenger, solar neutrinos have been driving both solar physics and neutrino physics developments for more than half a century. Since more extensive and advanced neutrino…
Venus currently rotates slowly, with its spin controlled by solid-body and atmospheric thermal tides. However, conditions may have been far different 4 billion years ago, when the Sun was fainter and most of the carbon within Venus could…
For over half a century, scientists have contemplated the potential existence of life within the clouds of Venus. Unknown chemistry leaves open the possibility that certain regions of the Venusian atmosphere are habitable. In situ…
A problem of constructing the trajectory of a spacecraft flight to Venus within the framework of a mission including landing of a lander in a given region of the planet's surface is being considered. A new celestial mechanics related method…