Related papers: Intercepting Interstellar Objects
The International Rosetta Mission was launched in 2004 and consists of the orbiter spacecraft Rosetta and the lander Philae. The aim of the mission is to map the comet 67P Churyumov Gerasimenko by remote sensing, to examine its environment…
Stellar occultations have been used to search for Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud objects. We propose a search for interstellar objects based on the characteristic durations ($\sim 0.1 \mathrm{s}$) of their stellar occultation signals and high…
LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, due to launch mid-2035, is a large class space mission by the European Space Agency (ESA). In partnership with NASA and ESA-member states, ESA is on track to launch what is expected to be the…
The {\em Solar Orbiter} is the next solar physics mission of the European Space Agency, ESA, in collaboration with NASA, with a launch planned in 2018. The spacecraft is designed to approach the Sun to within 0.28\,AU at perihelion of a…
This white paper proposes that AMBITION, a Comet Nucleus Sample Return mission, be a cornerstone of ESA's Voyage 2050 programme. We summarise some of the most important questions still open in cometary science after the successes of the…
In August 2019, a second interstellar object 2I/Borisov was discovered 2 years after the discovery of the first known interstellar object, 1I/'Oumuamua. Can we send a spacecraft to this object, using existing technologies? In this paper we…
The recent discovery of the first confirmed Interstellar Objects (ISOs) passing through the Solar System on clearly hyperbolic objects opens the potential for near term ISO missions, either to the two known objects, or to similar objects…
Discovered in October 2017, the interstellar object designated 1I/'Oumuamua was the first such object to be observed travelling through our solar system. 1I/'Oumuamua has other characteristics never seen before in a celestial body and…
In March 2009, NASA will launch the Kepler satellite -- a mission designed to discover habitable Earth-like planets around distant Sun-like stars. The method that Kepler will use to detect distant worlds will only reveal the size of the…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets transiting bright and nearby stars. TESS has been selected by NASA for launch in 2017 as an Astrophysics Explorer mission. The spacecraft will be placed into a highly…
The goal of finding and characterizing habitable planets in other solar systems represents one of humanity's greatest scientific challenges. NASA and ESA have initiated studies of missions that could accomplish this goal within the next ten…
We present an analysis of surveying the inner Solar System for objects that may pose some threat to the Earth. Most of the analysis is based on understanding the capability provided by Sentinel, a concept for an infrared space-based…
In this paper we outline the considerations required in order to select a target star system for the Icarus interstellar mission. It is considered that the maximum likely range for the Icarus vehicle will be 15 light-years, and a list is…
A recently discovered group of nearby co-orbital objects is an attractive location for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) to locate a probe to observe Earth while not being easily seen. These near-Earth objects provide an ideal way to…
With the recent discoveries of interstellar objects `Oumuamua and Borisov traversing the solar system, understanding the dynamics of interstellar objects is more pressing than ever. These detections have highlighted the possibility that…
Comets and asteroids have long captured human curiosity, and until recently, all documented examples belonged to our Solar System. That changed with the discovery of the first known interstellar object, 1I/2017 U1 ('Oumuamua), in 2017. Two…
The first interstellar object, `Oumuamua, was discovered in the Solar System by Pan-STARRS in 2017, allowing for a calibration of the abundance of interstellar objects of its size and an estimation of the subset of objects trapped by the…
Solar Orbiter is a joint ESA-NASA mission planed for launch in October 2018. The science payload includes remote-sensing and in-situ instrumentation designed with the primary goal of understanding how the Sun creates and controls the…
The recent observation of interstellar objects, 1I/Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov cross the solar system opened new opportunities for planetary science and planetary defense. As the first confirmed objects originating outside of the solar system,…
The Defense Department and NASA are investigating the possibility that aliens are currently surveilling Earth. This aligns with some search-for-extraterrestrial-intelligence (SETI) theorists who have concluded that ET's best strategy for…