Related papers: Ice Giants Pre-Decadal Survey Mission Study Report
The icy moons are in the focus of the exploration plans of the leading space agencies because of the indications of water-based life and geological activity observed in a number of these objects. In particular, the presence of geyser-like…
This STScI Working Group (WG) was charged with soliciting community feedback and evaluating the strategic planning for exoplanet science with JWST and HST given the high quality of exoplanet observations, the significantly lengthened…
Future remote sensing of exoplanets will be enhanced by a thorough investigation of our solar system Ice Giants (Neptune-size planets). What can the configuration of the magnetic field tell us (remotely) about the interior, and what…
We take a fresh look at about 60 years of recommendations for US federal funding for astronomical and astrophysical facilities provided by seven survey committees at roughly 10-year intervals. It remains true that very roughly one third of…
The Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP) is chartered by the NASA Astrophysics Division to carry out science, research, and technology tasks that advance NASA's science goals for exoplanets. The ExEP Science Gap List is a compilation of…
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…
This paper describes the beginning of the Far-Infrared Surveyor mission study for NASA's Astrophysics Decadal 2020. We describe the scope of the study, and the open process approach of the Science and Technology Definition Team. We are…
The NASA Great Observatories Maturation Program is a development plan to efficiently and effectively develop large, strategic astrophysics missions. Suborbital rocket and balloon programs have long been a key development tool for enabling…
With more than 15 years since the the first radial velocity discovery of a planet orbiting a Sun-like star, the time baseline for radial velocity surveys is now extending out beyond the orbit of Jupiter analogs. The sensitivity to exoplanet…
DUET, a proposed NASA Midex class mission, will produce a catalog of ~20,000 X-ray selected clusters and groups of galaxies suitable for detailed cosmological investigations. We present the cosmological constraints achievable by DUET, the…
NASA's Kepler Mission revolutionized exoplanet science in the early part of the 2010's. Looking back from the perspective of the end of that decade, Kepler appears to have burst upon the scene ready for battle, like Athena springing forth,…
XRISM is an X-ray astronomical mission by the JAXA, NASA, ESA and other international participants, that is planned for launch in 2022 (Japanese fiscal year), to quickly restore high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy of astrophysical objects.…
Goal 1 of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Mathematics Exoplanet Science Strategy is "to understand the formation and evolution of planetary systems as products of the process of star formation, and characterize and…
Endurance is a mission concept to explore and ultimately return samples from the Moon's largest and oldest impact basin, South Pole-Aitken (SPA). SPA holds the answers to many outstanding planetary science questions, including the earliest…
A coming resurgence of super heavy-lift launch vehicles has precipitated an immense interest in the future of crewed spaceflight and even future colonisation efforts. While it is true that a bright future awaits this sector, driven by…
The ESA Euclid mission is scheduled to launch on July 1st 2023. This White Paper discusses how Euclid observations of the Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey (GBTDS) area could dramatically enhance the exoplanet science output of the Nancy…
Astrophysics spans an enormous range of questions on scales from individual planets to the entire cosmos. To address the richness of 21st century astrophysics requires a corresponding richness of telescopes spanning all bands and all…
This article summarizes the process by which astronomers and astrophysicists reached a consensus view as to what are the highest priority scientific projects for the decade of the 1990s. I also review the remarkable success of these…
NASA's first two deep space missions, Pioneers 10 and 11, have been travelling through the outer solar system for three decades. A slight deviation from their calculated trajectories presents an as yet unsolved scientific mystery. The use…
We write in response to the call from the 2020 Decadal Survey to submit white papers illustrating the most pressing scientific questions in astrophysics for the coming decade. We propose exploration as the central question for the Decadal…