Related papers: Ice Giants Pre-Decadal Survey Mission Study Report
We review some key issues pertaining to NASA's Research and Analysis programs, and offer recommended actions to mitigate or resolve these issues. In particular, we recommended that NASA increases funding to support a healthy selection rate…
Comets likely formed in the outer regions of the protosolar nebula where they incorporated and preserved primitive presolar materials, volatiles resident in the outer disk, and more refractory materials from throughout the disk. The return…
Regular, low-cost Decadal-class science missions to planetary destinations will be enabled by high-{\Delta}V small spacecraft, such as the high-energy Photon, and small launch vehicles, such as Electron, to support expanding opportunities…
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman), NASA's next flagship observatory, has significant mission time to be spent on surveys for general astrophysics in addition to its three core community surveys. We considered what types of…
[Abridged] It is expected that the ongoing and future space-borne planet survey missions including TESS, PLATO, and Earth 2.0 will detect thousands of small to medium-sized planets via the transit technique, including over a hundred…
In response to the need for the Astro2020 Decadal Survey to explicitly engage early career astronomers, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted the Early Career Astronomer and Astrophysicist Focus Session (ECFS)…
Uranus has a tilted rotation axis, which is supposed to be caused by a giant impact. In general, an impact event also changes the internal compositional distribution and drives mass ejection from the planet, which may provide the origin of…
The science and origins of asteroids is deemed high priority in the Planetary Science Decadal Survey. Two of the main questions from the Decadal Survey pertain to what the "initial stages, conditions, and processes of solar system formation…
This report provides detailed findings on the critical laboratory astrophysics data needs that are required to maximize the scientific return for NASA's current and near-term planned astrophysics missions. It also provides prioritized…
Exoplanetary science has reached a historic moment. The James Webb Space Telescope will be capable of probing the atmospheres of rocky planets, and perhaps even search for biologically produced gases. However this is contingent on…
Past years have seen various publications attempting to explain the apparent clustering features of trans-Neptunian objects, the most popular explanation being an unconfirmed "Planet 9". The recently proposed Uranus Orbiter and Probe…
Some of the major discoveries of the recent Cassini-Huygens mission have put Titan and Enceladus firmly on the Solar System map. The mission has revolutionised our view of Solar System satellites, arguably matching their scientific…
In 2016, the NASA Juno spacecraft will initiate its one-year mission around Jupiter and become the first probe to explore the polar regions of Jupiter. The HST UV instruments (STIS and ACS) can greatly contribute to the success of the Juno…
I describe the various elements of the NASA Science Mission Directorate's Astrophysics Division Research and Analysis Program and provide quantitative descriptions for factors such as proposal submission characteristics, proposal success…
PicSat is a nanosatellite currently being developed to observe the transit of the giant planet \b{eta} Pictoris, expected some time between July 2017 and June 2018. The mission is based on a Cubesat architecture, with a small but ambitious…
The Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is the next NASA astrophysics flagship mission, to follow the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The WFIRST mission was chosen as the top-priority large space mission of the 2010 astronomy…
The exploration and study of exoplanets remain at the frontier of astronomical research, challenging scientists to continuously innovate and refine methodologies to navigate the vast, complex data these celestial bodies produce. This…
More than 30 years have passed since the Voyager 2 fly-bys of Uranus and Neptune. I discuss a range of lessons learned from Voyager, broadly grouped into process, planning, and people. In terms of process, we must be open to new concepts:…
Uranus and Neptune are the least explored planets in the Solar System. A key question regarding the two planets is the similarity of their observed flows despite the great differences in their obliquity and internal heating. To answer this…
The IAU/IUGG Working Group on "Nutation for a non-rigid Earth", led by V\'eronique Dehant, won the European Descartes Prize in 2003, for its work developing a new model for the precession and the nutations of the Earth. This model (MHB2000,…