Related papers: Ice Giants Pre-Decadal Survey Mission Study Report

The NEAT (Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope) mission is a proposal submitted to ESA for its 2010 call for M-size mission within the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan. The main scientific goal of the NEAT mission is to detect and characterize…

This white paper is a summary of the Uranus Flagship Workshop that took place 21 to 23 May 2024 at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Co-led by Goddard and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab conveners, we had a broad, international, Science…

Over the past three decades, exoplanet research has delivered an extensive census of planets spanning a wide range of masses, sizes, and orbital configurations. Despite this progress, the physical interpretation of these populations remains…

We review the interior structure and evolution of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and giant exoplanets with particular emphasis on constraining their global composition. Compared to the first edition of this review, we provide a new…

The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) was the top ranked large space mission in the 2010 New Worlds, New Horizons decadal survey, and it was formed by merging the science programs of 3 different mission concepts, including the…

NASA's re-purposed Kepler mission -- dubbed K2 -- has brought new scientific opportunities that were not anticipated for the original Kepler mission. One science goal that makes optimal use of K2's capabilities, in particular its 360-degree…

Cosmological studies have now entered Stage IV according to the Dark Energy Task Force prescription, thanks to new missions (Euclid, Rubin Observatory, SRG/eROSITA) that are expected to provide the required ultimate accuracy in the dark…

The 3UCubed project is a 3U CubeSat being jointly developed by the University of New Hampshire, Sonoma State University, and Howard University as a part of the NASA Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, IMAP, student collaboration.…

Athena is an X-ray observatory-class mission concept, developed from April to December 2011 as a result of the reformulation exercise for L-class mission proposals in the framework of ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025. Athena's science case is…

As many as 5 ice giants--Neptune-mass planets composed of 90% ice and rock and 10% hydrogen--are thought to form at heliocentric distances of 10-25 AU on closely packed orbits spaced ~5 Hill radii apart. Such oligarchies are ultimately…

Icy moons with subsurface oceans of liquid water rank among the most promising astrobiological targets in our Solar System. In this work, we assess the feasibility of deploying laser sail technology in precursor life-detection missions. We…

[JDEM-Omega is one of the three concepts that contributed to the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission advocated by the Astro2010 Decadal Survey. It is the concept on which the recommended observatory configuration is…

One of the key research themes identified by the Astro2020 decadal survey is Worlds and Suns in Context. The Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite (AXIS) is a proposed NASA APEX mission that will become the prime high-energy instrument for…

Human long duration exploration missions (LDEMs) raise a number of technological challenges. This paper addresses the question of the crew autonomy: as the distances increase, the communication delays and constraints tend to prevent the…

The NEAT (Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope) mission is a proposition submitted to ESA for its 2010 call for M-size mission. The main scientific goal is to detect and characterize planetary systems in an exhaustive way down to 1 Earth mass…

Recent improvements in data collection volume from planetary and space physics missions have allowed the application of novel data science techniques. The Cassini mission for example collected over 600 gigabytes of scientific data from 2004…

GREX-PLUS (Galaxy Reionization EXplorer and PLanetary Universe Spectrometer) is a mission candidate for a JAXA's strategic L-class mission to be launched in the 2030s. Its primary sciences are two-fold: galaxy formation and evolution and…

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has been the most impactful science-driven mission ever flown by NASA. However, when HST reaches the end of its life, there will be a void due to the loss of some of the science capabilities afforded by HST…

Giant planets acquire gas, ices and rocks during the early formation stages of planetary systems and thus inform us on the formation process itself. Proceeding from inside out, examining the connections between the deep interiors and the…

Continuous improvements of observations and modeling efforts have led to tremendous strides in exoplanetary science. However, as instruments and techniques advance laboratory data becomes more important to interpret exoplanet observations…