Related papers: Ice Giants Pre-Decadal Survey Mission Study Report
Present and upcoming NASA missions will be intensively observing a selected, partially overlapping set of stars for exoplanet studies. Key physical and chemical information about these stars and their systems is needed for planning…
We present the DECam Ecliptic Exploration Project (DEEP) survey strategy including observing cadence for orbit determination, exposure times, field pointings and filter choices. The overall goal of the survey is to discover and characterize…
The surface and subsurface of worlds beyond Mars remain largely unexplored. Yet these worlds hold keys to fundamental questions in planetary science - from potentially habitable subsurface oceans on icy moons to ancient records preserved in…
Ocean science, which delves into the oceans that are reservoirs of life and biodiversity, is of great significance given that oceans cover over 70% of our planet's surface. Recently, advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have transformed…
NASA is currently carrying out science and technical studies to identify its next astronomy flagship mission, slated to begin development in the 2020s. It has become clear that a Large Ultraviolet/Optical/IR (LUVOIR) Surveyor mission…
Key questions surrounding the origin and evolution of Titan and the Saturnian system in which it resides remain following the Cassini-Huygens mission. In-situ measurements performed at key locations on the body are a highly effective way to…
SPHEREx is a NASA mission designed to perform an all-sky spectroscopic survey in the 0.75 - 5 $\mu$m wavelength range. Its primary science objectives are to investigate: (1) inflationary cosmology, (2) the history of galaxy formation, and…
This invited white paper, submitted to the National Science Foundation in January of 2020, discusses the current challenges faced by the United States astronomical instrumentation community in the era of extremely large telescopes. Some…
This document describes the Netherlands' decadal strategic planning process for the current decade. We give the scientific rationale for our prioritization of research areas and the facility choices that follow from our scientific…
Despite many similarities, there are significant observed differences between Uranus and Neptune: while Uranus is tilted and has a regular set of satellites, suggesting their accretion from a disk, Neptune's moons are irregular and are…
EarthFinder is a Probe Mission concept selected for study by NASA for input to the 2020 astronomy decadal survey. This study is currently active and a final white paper report is due to NASA at the end of calendar 2018. We are tasked with…
A National Science Foundation-sponsored container runtimes investigation was conducted by the Aristotle Cloud Federation to better understand the challenges of selecting and using Docker, Singularity, and X-Containers. The main goal of this…
We summarize our exploratory investigation into whether Machine Learning (ML) techniques applied to publicly available professional text can substantially augment strategic planning for astronomy. We find that an approach based on Latent…
Satellites of giant planets thought to form in gaseous circumplanetary disks (CPDs) during the late planet-formation phase, but it was unknown so far whether smaller mass planets, such as the ice giants could form such disks, thus moons…
We have conducted a data study of leadership and participation in NASA's Astrophysics Explorer-class missions for the nine solicitations issued during the period 2008-2016, using gender as a marker of diversity. During this time, 102…
The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will transform our knowledge of the outer planets and their satellite systems; however the visibility of unique targets of opportunity with high scientific value will be reduced for northern objects.…
This is a white paper submitted to the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey. The deep atmosphere of Venus is largely unexplored and yet may harbor clues to the evolutionary pathways for a major silicate planet with implications…
The National Academy of Science Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee, in its new Decadal survey entitled Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium, recommends, as a first priority, the establishment of a National Virtual…
Over the past century, major advances in astronomy and astrophysics have been largely driven by improvements in instrumentation and data collection. With the amassing of high quality data from new telescopes, and especially with the advent…
The Euclid mission is a visionary project undertaken by the European Space Agency (ESA) to probe the universe's evolution and geometry by surveying the position and gravitational shape distortion of billions of galaxies. These observations…