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To-date, all human economic activity has depended on the resources of a single planet, and it has long been recognized that developments in space exploration could in principle open our closed planetary economy to external resources of…
The Earth-Moon-Sun system has traditionally provided the best laboratory for testing the strong equivalence principle. For a decade, the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation (APOLLO) has been producing the world's best…
Telescope and detector developments continuously enable deeper and more detailed studies of astronomical objects. Larger collecting areas, improvement in dispersion and detector techniques, and higher sensitivities allow detection of more…
After several years of intensive technological development Virtual Observatory resources have reached a level of maturity sufficient for their routine scientific exploitation. The Virtual Observatory is starting to be used by astronomers in…
Europe and a number of countries in the world are investing significant amounts of public money to operate and maintain large, ground-based astronomical facilities. Even larger projects are under development to observe the faintest and most…
NASA's return to the Moon presents unparalleled opportunities to advance high-impact scientific capabilities. At the cutting edge of these possibilities are extremely high-resolution interferometric observations at visible and ultraviolet…
Because of lunar librations, the retroreflectors left on the moon do not, in general, face directly at the Earth. Usually this is regarded as a disadvantage. It results in a spread of arrival times, because each cube that comprises the…
Future Moon bases will likely be constructed using resources mined from the surface of the Moon. The difficulty of maintaining a human workforce on the Moon and communications lag with Earth means that mining will need to be conducted using…
Forty years ago, Apollo astronauts placed the first of several retroreflector arrays on the lunar surface. Their continued usefulness for laser-ranging might suggest that the lunar environment does not damage optical devices. However, new…
The Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-Gateway, or simply Gateway) is a crewed platform that will be assembled and operated in the vicinity of the Moon by NASA and international partner organizations, including ESA, starting from the…
Several commercial telecommunication ventures together with a well funded US military program make it a likely possibility that an autonomous, high-altitude, light-than-air (LTA) vehicle which could maneuver and station-keep for weeks to…
The Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) experiment has accumulated 50 years of range data of improving accuracy from ground stations to the laser retroreflector arrays (LRAs) on the lunar surface. The upcoming decade offers several opportunities to…
For the majority of optical observing programs, the sky brightness provides the fundamental limit to signal detection such that the scientific feasibility is largely dictated by the moon phase. Since most observatories do not have the…
Dome A in Antarctica has been demonstrated to be the best site on earth for optical, infrared, and terahertz astronomical observations by more and more evidence, such as excellent free-atmosphere seeing, extremely low perceptible water…
Due to its absence of an atmosphere and relative geological inertness, the Moon's surface records past impacts of objects from the Solar system and beyond. We examine the prospects for discovering extrasolar material near the lunar surface…
Wide-angle surveys have been an engine for new discoveries throughout the modern history of astronomy, and have been among the most highly cited and scientifically productive observing facilities in recent years. This trend is likely to…
The amount of data produced by large observational facilities and space missions has led to the archiving and on-line accessibility of much of this data, available to the entire astronomical community. This allows a much wider…
In this review we present an overview of observing facilities for solar research, which are planned or will come to operation in near future. We concentrate on facilities, which harbor specific potential for solar magnetometry. We describe…
Earthshine is the dominant source of natural illumination on the surface of the Moon during lunar night, and at locations within permanently shadowed regions that never receive direct sunlight. As such, earthshine may enable the exploration…
Contemporary astronomy benefits of very large and rapidly growing amounts of data in all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, from long-wavelength radio waves to high energy gamma-rays. Astronomers normally specialize in data taken in one…