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Experience suggests that structural issues in how institutional Astrophysics approaches data-driven science and the development of discovery technology may be hampering the community's ability to respond effectively to a rapidly changing…
Support for early career astronomers who are just beginning to explore astronomy research is imperative to increase retention of diverse practitioners in the field. Since 2010, Astrobites has played an instrumental role in engaging members…
The world is changing fast, and so is the space sector. Planning for large scientific experiments two decades ahead may no longer be the most sensible approach. I develop the argument that large science experiments are becoming comparable…
The current disparity in computational knowledge is a critical hindrance to the diversity and success of the field. Recommendations are outlined for policies and funding models to enable the growth and retention of a new generation of…
Given the impressive investment by the nation in observational Astronomy and Astrophysics facilities coming on line now and in the near future, we advocate for an increased investment in applied and fundamental research on Astrophysical and…
WFIRST is NASA's first flagship mission with pre-defined core science programs to study dark energy and perform a statistical census of wide orbit exoplanets with a gravitational microlensing survey. Together, these programs are expected to…
NASA Astrophysics Division funds development of cutting-edge technology to enable its missions to achieve ambitious and groundbreaking science goals. These technology development efforts are managed by the Physics of the Cosmos, Cosmic…
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…
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…
We report the outcomes of a survey that explores the current practices, needs and expectations of the astrophysics community, concerning four research aspects: open science practices, data access and management, data visualization, and data…
The number of small satellites has grown dramatically in the past decade from tens of satellites per year in the mid-2010s to a projection of tens of thousands in orbit by the mid-2020s. This presents both problems and opportunities for…
The 2020s will be the most data-rich decade of astronomy in history. As the scale and complexity of our surveys increase, the problem of scheduling becomes more critical. We must develop high-quality scheduling approaches, implement them as…
This white paper was submitted to NASA's Search For Life Science Analysis Group (SFL-SAG): To ensure that the first mission designed to seek signs of extant life since 1976 is able to produce an unambiguous biological interpretation, the…
The Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA) is calling on federal science funding agencies, in their role as the largest sources of funding for astronomy in the United States, to take actions that will advance career…
The search for life in the universe is a major theme of astronomy and astrophysics for the next decade. Searches for technosignatures are complementary to searches for biosignatures, in that they offer an alternative path to discovery, and…
Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will be NASA's flagship space telescope of the 2040s, designed to search for life on other planets and to transform broad areas of astrophysics. NASA are seeking international partners, and the UK is…
The key to the exploration of the Ice Giant planets is avoiding cutting edge technology. Complexity produces delay and financial roadblocks. Simple robot scouts can be launched in time to utilize gravity assists from Jupiter in the early…
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…
A budget neutral strategy is proposed for NSF to lead the implementation of multimessenger astronomy and astrophysics, as outlined in the Astro2010 Decadal Survey. The emerging capabilities for simultaneous measurements of physical and…
From 2018 to 2020, the Scientific Balloon Roadmap Program Analysis Group (Balloon Roadmap PAG) served as an community-based, interdisciplinary forum for soliciting and coordinating community analysis and input in support of the NASA…