Related papers: Intercepting Interstellar Objects
Two new interplanetary technologies have advanced in the past decade to the point where they may enable exciting, affordable missions that reach further and faster deep into the outer regions of our solar system: (i) small and capable…
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence by looking for signals from advanced technological civilizations has been ongoing for some decades. We suggest that it could possibly be made more efficient by focusing on stars from which the…
At this early stage of its passage through our Solar System, 3I/ATLAS, the recently discovered interstellar interloper, has displayed various anomalous characteristics, determined from photometric and astrometric observations. As largely a…
Long range observations in the field of astronomy have opened up our understanding of the Solar System, the Galaxy and the wider Universe. In this paper we discuss the idea of direct in-situ reconnaissance of nearby stellar systems, using…
Among solar system objects, comets coming from the Oort Cloud are an elusive population, intrinsically rare and difficult to detect. Nonetheless, as the more pristine objects we can observe, they encapsulate critical cues on the formation…
Comets are a remarkable feature in our night sky, visible on their passage through the inner Solar system as the Sun's energy sublimates ices and liberates surface material, generating beautiful comae, dust, and ion tails. Comets are also…
Comets are the most pristine planetesimals left from the formation of the Solar System. They carry unique information on the materials and the physical processes which led to the presence of planets and moons. Many important questions about…
Almost all SETI searches to date have explicitly targeted stars in the hope of detecting artificial radio or optical transmissions. It is argued that extra-terrestrials (ET) might regard sending physical probes to our own Solar System as a…
The discovery of the first two interstellar objects implies that, on average, every star contributes a substantial amount of material to the galactic population by ejecting such bodies from the host system. Since scattering is a chaotic…
CubeSats and small satellites are emerging as low-cost tools for performing science and exploration in deep space. These new classes of satellite exploit the latest advancement in miniaturization of electronics, power systems, and…
We review the history of spacecraft encounters with comets, concentrating on those that took place in the recent past, since the publication of the Comets II book. This includes the flyby missions Stardust and Deep Impact, and their…
We give a general overview of what the scientific community refers to as "exocomets". The general definition of exocomets, as presented in this work, is discussed and compared with Solar System comets and interstellar objects, addressing…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will perform a two-year survey of nearly the entire sky, with the main goal of detecting exoplanets smaller than Neptune around bright and nearby stars. There do not appear to be any…
Solar Orbiter is intended to become ESA's next solar mission in heritage of the successful SOHO project. The scientific objectives of the mission, its design, and its scientific payload are reviewed. Specific emphasis is given to the…
The third interstellar object to be discovered, 3I/ATLAS, has a unique and continually unfolding story to tell about its nature and origin as it is monitored by telescopes on Earth, orbiting Earth and around the Solar System. Previous…
The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spacecraft will pass approximately downstream of the position of comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) in late May and early June 2020. We predict that the spacecraft may encounter the comet's ion tail around…
Scheduled to launch in late 2021, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) is a NASA Small Explorer Mission in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The mission will open a new window of investigation - imaging X-ray…
The Gaia satellite, planned for launch by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2013, is the next generation astrometry mission following Hipparcos. While mapping the whole sky, the Gaia space mission is expected to discover thousands of Solar…
The most obvious extragalactic targets for optical/infrared interferometers are Active Galactic Nuclei. In this document, I try to overview other topics that could be of interest to studies of galaxies and whether they could be adequate for…
What is the chance we start a conversation with another civilization like our own? Our technological society produced signals that could be received by other extraterrestrial civilizations, within a sphere around us with a radius of $\sim…