Related papers: Ice Giants Pre-Decadal Survey Mission Study Report
This is a community white paper submitted to the Decadal Survey in Planetary Science and Astrobiology, reflecting the views of the NASA Astrobiology Program's Research Coordination Network for Ocean Worlds (NOW). We recommend the…
The outer solar system has a diverse range of objects, holding important clues about the formation and evolution of our solar system, the emergence and current distribution of life, and the physical processes controlling both our own and…
WFIRST is the highest priority space mission of the Decadal review, however, it is unlikely to begin in this decade primarily due to a anticipated NASA budget that is unlikely to have sufficient resources to fund such a mission. For this…
Exoplanets number in their thousands, and the number is ever increasing with the advent of new surveys and improved instrumentation. One of the most surprising things we have learnt from these discoveries is not that small-rocky planets in…
This white paper advocates for the inclusion of small, captured Outer Solar system objects, found in the Ice Giant region in the next Decadal Survey. These objects include the Trojans and Irregular satellite populations of Uranus and…
The Large UV/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) mission is one of four Decadal Survey Mission Concepts studied by NASA in preparation for the US National Academies' Astro2020 Decadal Survey. This observatory has the major goal of…
Uranus and Neptune, the so-called "ice giants", represent a fascinating class of planets. They are the outermost planets in the solar system with intermediate masses/sizes, complex non-polar magnetic fields, strong atmospheric winds, and…
The Large UV/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) mission is one of four Decadal Survey Mission Concepts studied by NASA in preparation for the US National Academies' Astro2020 Decadal Survey. This observatory has the major goal of…
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…
At the far reaches of the outer Solar System, the ice giants remain the last class of planets yet to be studied using orbiters. The 2023-2032 Planetary Science Decadal Survey has underscored the importance of the ice giants in understanding…
Space-based experiments today can uniquely address important questions related to the fundamental laws of Nature. In particular, high-accuracy physics experiments in space can test relativistic gravity and probe the physics beyond the…
A multi-institutional, multi-national science team will soon submit a NASA proposal to build a constellation of spacecraft to fly into the near-Earth solar wind in a swarm spanning a multitude of scales in order to obtain critically needed…
This white paper examines the benefit of the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope for studies of the Solar System's four giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. JWST's superior sensitivity, combined with high spatial and…
The NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program's SAG15 group has solicited, collected, and organized community input on high-level science questions that could be addressed with future direct imaging exoplanet missions and the type and quality of…
The U.S. astronomy decadal surveys have been models for advice to government on how to apportion resources to optimise the scientific return on national investments in facilities and manpower. The U.S. is now gearing up to conduct its 2020…
We summarize the first exploratory investigation into whether Machine Learning techniques can augment science strategic planning. We find that an approach based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation using abstracts drawn from high impact astronomy…
Beginning in 2012, NASA utilized a strategic process to identify broad societal questions, or grand challenges, that are well suited to the aerospace sector and align with national priorities. This effort generated NASA's first grand…
In December 2010, NASA created a Science Definition Team (SDT) for WFIRST, the Wide Field Infra-Red Survey Telescope, recommended by the Astro 2010 Decadal Survey as the highest priority for a large space mission. The SDT was chartered to…
The distant ice giants of the Solar System, Uranus and Neptune, have only been visited by one space mission, Voyager 2. The current knowledge on their composition remains very limited despite some recent advances. A better characterization…
NASA's proposed WFIRST-AFTA mission will discover thousands of exoplanets with separations from the habitable zone out to unbound planets, using the technique of gravitational microlensing. The Study Analysis Group 11 of the NASA Exoplanet…