Related papers: The Great Observatories: A Triumph of the Human Sp…

NASA's Great Observatories have opened up the electromagnetic spectrum from space, providing sustained access to wavelengths not accessible from the ground. Together, Hubble, Compton, Chandra, and Spitzer have provided the scientific…

The Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA's Great Observatory for infrared astronomy, was launched 2003 August 25 and is returning excellent scientific data from its Earth-trailing solar orbit. Spitzer combines the intrinsic sensitivity achievable…

Astrophysics facilities have been of tremendous importance for planetary science. The flagship space observatory Hubble Space Telescope has produced ground-breaking Solar System science, but when launched it did not even have the capability…

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the…

Looking ahead to the next decade and imagining the landscape of astronomy in 2020, it is clear that astronomical surveys, large and small, plus extensive follow-up projects, will be a great engine of progress in our profession. Surveys have…

Significant advances in science always take place when the state of the art in instrumentation improves dramatically. NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory represents such an advance. Launched in July of 1999, Chandra is an observatory designed…

This paper summarizes contributions and suggestions as presented at the Chandra Workshop Star Formation in the Era of Three Great Observatories conducted in July 2005. One of the declared goals of the workshop was to raise recognition…

The Chandra X-ray Observatory is the X-ray component of NASA's Great Observatory Program which includes the recently launched Spitzer Infrared Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) for observations in the visible, and the Compton…

Radio astronomy and active exploration of space are peers: both began by efforts of enthusiasts in the 1930s and got a major technological boost in the 1940s-50s. Thus, for the sake of a brief review at this very special conference, it is…

The Chandra X-ray Observatory is the X-ray component of NASA's Great Observatory Program and has been operating successfully for over five years. We present here brief overview of the technical performance and some of the remarkable…

The overarching goal of planetary astronomy is to deduce how the present collection of objects found in our Solar System were formed from the original material present in the proto-solar nebula. As over two hundred exo-planetary systems are…

Since its launch in April 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has produced an increasing flow of scientific results. The large number of refereed publications based on HST data allows a detailed evaluation of the effectiveness of this…

The number of small satellites has grown dramatically in the past decade from tens of satellites per year in the mid-2010s to a projection of tens of thousands in orbit by the mid-2020s. This presents both problems and opportunities for…

The great conjunction of 21 December 2020 saw Jupiter and Saturn appear together in the sky, separated by just a tenth of a degree (equivalent to a distance five times smaller than the diameter of the full Moon). This provided a potential…

The Spitzer Space Telescope, born as the Shuttle Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) and later the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (still SIRTF), was under discussion and development within NASA and the scientific community for more than…

Wide-angle surveys have been an engine for new discoveries throughout the modern history of astronomy, and have been among the most highly cited and scientifically productive observing facilities in recent years. This trend is likely to…

Since 1990, the United Nations is annually holding a workshop on basic space science for the benefit of the worldwide development of astronomy. Additional to the scientific benefits of the workshops and the strengthening of international…

Over the past decade, sky surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have proven the power of large data sets for answering fundamental astrophysical questions. This observational progress, based on a synergy of advances in telescope…

Binary stars are crucial laboratories for stellar physics, so have been photometric targets for space missions beginning with the very first orbiting telescope (OAO-2) launched in 1968. This review traces the binary stars observed and the…

Most major discoveries in astronomy are unplanned, and result from surveying the Universe in a new way, rather than by testing a hypothesis or conducting an investigation with planned outcomes. For example, of the 10 greatest discoveries…