相关论文: Mariner 2 and its Legacy: 50 Years on
The current knowledge of Mercury orbit has mainly been gained by direct radar ranging obtained from the 60s to 1998 and by five Mercury flybys made by Mariner 10 in the 70s, and MESSENGER made in 2008 and 2009. On March 18, 2011, MESSENGER…
The successes of previous and current Mars rovers have encouraged space agencies worldwide to pursue additional planetary exploration missions with more ambitious navigation goals. For example, NASA's planned Mars Sample Return mission will…
Radio pulsars have been responsible for many astonishing astrophysical and fundamental physics breakthroughs since their discovery 50 years ago. In this review I will discuss many of the highlights, most of which were only possible because…
As an end-member of terrestrial planet formation, Mercury holds unique clues about the original distribution of elements in the earliest stages of solar system development and how planets and exoplanets form and evolve in close proximity to…
This white paper discusses a repurposed mission for the Kepler spacecraft that focusses on solving outstanding problems in planet formation and evolution by targeting the study of the hot Jupiter population of young stars. This mission can…
A problem of constructing the trajectory of a spacecraft flight to Venus within the framework of a mission including landing of a lander in a given region of the planet's surface is being considered. A new celestial mechanics related method…
In May 2008, the Antares neutrino telescope was completed at 2.5 km depth in the Mediterranean Sea; data taking has been going on since. A prerequisite for neutrino astronomy is an accurate reconstruction of the neutrino events, as well as…
Venus is known for its extreme surface temperature and its sulfuric acid clouds. But the cloud layers on Venus have similar temperature and pressure conditions to those on the surface of Earth and are conjectured to be a possible habitat…
We review the current understanding of the upper atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune, and explore the upcoming opportunities available to study these exciting planets. The ice giants are the least understood planets in the solar system,…
The observations made during the Voyager 2 flyby have shown that the stratosphere of Uranus and Neptune are warmer than expected by previous models. In addition, no seasonal variability of the thermal structure has been observed on Uranus…
This review presents an insight into our current knowledge of the atmospheres of the planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the satellite Titan, and those of exoplanets. It deals with the thermal structure, aerosol…
At the dawn of the first discovery of exoplanets orbiting sun-like stars in the mid-1990s, few believed that observations of exoplanet atmospheres would ever be possible. After the 2002 Hubble Space Telescope detection of a transiting…
Rocket technology, originally developed for military applications, has provided a low-cost observing platform to carry critical and rapid-response scientific investigations for over 70 years. Even with the development of launch vehicles…
Ariel, the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, was adopted as the fourth medium-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision programme to be launched in 2029. During its 4-year mission, Ariel will study what exoplanets are…
Present-day Venus is an inhospitable place with surface temperatures approaching 750K and an atmosphere over 90 times as thick as present day Earth's. Billions of years ago the picture may have been very different. We have created a suite…
At least two active plumes were observed on Neptune's moon Triton during the Voyager 2 flyby in 1989. Models for Triton's plumes have previously been grouped into five hypotheses, two of which are primarily atmospheric phenomena and are…
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…
Population studies of exoplanets are key to unlocking their statistical properties. So far the inferred properties have been mostly limited to planetary, orbital and stellar parameters extracted from, e.g., Kepler, radial velocity, and GAIA…
Historically, there is no doubt that the early years of the USSR space program put them way ahead of the competition (the USA). Nonetheless, although this was not what the Russians wished to present to the world, the interplanetary…
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…