Related papers: Dirt, Gravity, and Lunar-Based Telescopes: The Val…
Current thinking about the Moon as a destination has revitalized interest in lunar astronomical observatories. Once seen by a large scientific community as a highly enabling site, the dramatic improvement in capabilities for free-space…
The lunar surface is a compelling location for large, distributed optical facilities, with significant advantages over orbital facilities for high spatial resolution astrophysics. The serious development of mission concepts is timely…
The lunar geological record has much to tell us about the earliest history of the Solar System, the origin and evolution of the Earth-Moon system, the geological evolution of rocky planets, and the near-Earth cosmic environment throughout…
Motivated by efforts to return humanity to the Moon, three cases are reviewed for X-ray astronomy from the lunar surface: (1) Facilitation of ambitious engineering designs including high throughput telescopes, long focal length optics and…
A radio telescope placed in lunar orbit, or on the surface of the Moon's farside, could be of great value to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The advantage of such a telescope is that it would be shielded by the body of…
We look at what astronomy from the Moon might be like in the visible over the next few decades. The Moon offers the possibility of installing large telescopes or interferometers with instruments larger than those on orbiting telescopes. We…
The Hubble Space Telescope has produced astonishing science over the past thirty years. Hubble's productivity can continue to soar for years to come provided some worn out components get upgraded. While powerful new ground-based and space…
The Moon is our future. It may seem like a chimera with a projected cost in excess of 100 billion\$, and counting, dispensed on ARTEMIS with little to show to date. However it is the ideal site for the largest telescopes that we can dream…
The Moon is a unique platform for fundamental astrophysical measurements of gravitation, the Sun, and the Universe. Lacking a permanent ionosphere and, on the farside, shielded from terrestrial radio emissions, a radio telescope on the Moon…
Numerous missions planned for the next decade are likely to target a handful of smal sites of interest on the Moon's surface, creating risks of crowding and interference at these locations. The Moon presents finite and scarce areas with…
We advocate for a mission concept study for a space telescope dedicated to solar system science in Earth orbit. Such a study was recommended by the Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS) report "Getting Ready for the Next…
Many science missions require an unobstructed view of space and a stable thermal environment but lack the technical or programmatic resources to reach orbits that satisfy these needs. This paper presents a high Earth orbit in 2:1 resonance…
By volume, more than 99% of the solar system has not been imaged at radio frequencies. Almost all of this space (the solar wind) can be traversed by fast electrons producing radio emissions at frequencies lower than the terrestrial…
We outline a concept for OWL-Moon, a 50-100m aperture telescope located on the surface of the Moon, to address three major areas in astronomy, namely the detection of biosignatures on habitable exoplanets, the geophysics of exoplanets, and…
Space astronomy in the last 40 years has largely been done from spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO) for which the technology is proven and delivery mechanisms are readily available. However, new opportunities are arising with the surge in…
The Hubble Space Telescope's mission is summarized, with special emphasis placed on the Space Telescope Science Institute's unique experience with Hubble's behavior as an astronomical telescope in the environment of low earth orbit for over…
Current and future optical technologies will aid exploration of the Moon and Mars while advancing fundamental physics research in the solar system. Technologies and possible improvements in the laser-enabled tests of various physical…
Lunar laser ranging has provided many of the best tests of gravitation since the first Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon. The march to higher precision continues to this day, now entering the millimeter regime, and promising continued…
The historical development of ground based astronomical telescopes leads us to expect that space-based astronomical telescopes will need to be operational for many decades. The exchange of scientific instruments in space will be a…
The next generation of space-based experiments will go hunting for answers to cosmology's key open questions which revolve around inflation, dark matter and dark energy. Low earth orbit and lunar missions within the European Space Agency's…