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The discovery of extra-solar planets is one of the greatest achievements of modern astronomy. There are now more than 200 such objects known, and the recent detection of planets with masses approximately 5 times that of Earth demonstrates that extra-solar planets of low mass exist. In addition to providing a wealth of scientific information on the formation and structure of planetary systems, these discoveries capture the interest of both scientists and the wider public with the profound prospect of the search for life in the Universe. We propose an L-type mission, called Darwin, whose primary goal is the study of terrestrial extrasolar planets and the search for life on them. By its very nature, Darwin advances the first Grand Theme of ESA Cosmic Vision. Accomplishing the mission objectives will require collaborative science across disciplines ranging from planet formation and atmospheres to chemistry and biology, and these disciplines will reap profound rewards from their contributions to the Darwin mission.
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GRAVITAS is an X-ray observatory, designed and optimised to address the ESA Cosmic Vision theme of Matter under extreme conditions. It was submitted as a response to the call for M3 mission proposals. The concept centres around an X-ray telescope of unprecedented effective area, which will focus radiation emitted from close to the event horizon of black holes or the surface of neutron stars. To reveal the nature and behaviour of matter in the most extreme astrophysical environments, GRAVITAS targets a key feature in the X-ray spectra of compact objects: the iron Kalpha line at ~6.5 keV. The energy, profile, and variability of this emission line, and the properties of the surrounding continuum emission, shaped by General Relativity (GR) effects, provide a unique probe of gravity in its strong field limit. Among its prime targets are hundreds of supermassive black holes in bright Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), which form the perfect laboratory to help understand the physical processes behind black hole growth. Accretion plays a fundamental role in the shaping of galaxies throughout cosmic time, via the process of feedback. Modest (~sub-arcmin) spatial resolution would deliver the necessary sensitivity to extend high quality X-ray spectroscopy of AGN to cosmologically-relevant distances. Closer to home, ultra-high count rate capabilities and sub-millisecond time resolution enable the study of GR effects and the equation of state of dense matter in the brightest X-ray binaries in our own Galaxy, using multiple probes, such as the broad iron line, the shape of the disk continuum emission, quasi-periodic oscillations, reverberation mapping, and X-ray burst oscillations. Despite its breakthrough capabilities, all enabling technologies for GRAVITAS are already in a high state of readiness. It is based on ultra light-weight X-ray optics and a focal plane detector using silicon technology.
The Exoplanet Euclid Legacy Survey (ExELS) proposes to determine the frequency of cold exoplanets down to Earth mass from host separations of ~1 AU out to the free-floating regime by detecting microlensing events in Galactic Bulge. We show that ExELS can also detect large numbers of hot, transiting exoplanets in the same population. The combined microlensing+transit survey would allow the first self-consistent estimate of the relative frequencies of hot and cold sub-stellar companions, reducing biases in comparing near-field radial velocity and transiting exoplanets with far-field microlensing exoplanets. The age of the Bulge and its spread in metallicity further allows ExELS to better constrain both the variation of companion frequency with metallicity and statistically explore the strength of star-planet tides. We conservatively estimate that ExELS will detect ~4100 sub-stellar objects, with sensitivity typically reaching down to Neptune-mass planets. Of these, ~600 will be detectable in both Euclids VIS (optical) channel and NISP H-band imager, with ~90% of detections being hot Jupiters. Likely scenarios predict a range of 2900-7000 for VIS and 400-1600 for H-band. Twice as many can be expected in VIS if the cadence can be increased to match the 20-minute H-band cadence. The separation of planets from brown dwarfs via Doppler boosting or ellipsoidal variability will be possible in a handful of cases. Radial velocity confirmation should be possible in some cases, using 30-metre-class telescopes. We expect secondary eclipses, and reflection and emission from planets to be detectable in up to ~100 systems in both VIS and NISP-H. Transits of ~500 planetary-radius companions will be characterised with two-colour photometry and ~40 with four-colour photometry (VIS,YJH), and the albedo of (and emission from) a large sample of hot Jupiters in the H-band can be explored statistically.
The discovery of extra-solar planets is one of the greatest achievements of modern astronomy. The detection of planets with a wide range of masses demonstrates that extra-solar planets of low mass exist. In this paper we describe a mission, called Darwin, whose primary goal is the search for, and characterization of, terrestrial extrasolar planets and the search for life. Accomplishing the mission objectives will require collaborative science across disciplines including astrophysics, planetary sciences, chemistry and microbiology. Darwin is designed to detect and perform spectroscopic analysis of rocky planets similar to the Earth at mid-infrared wavelengths (6 - 20 micron), where an advantageous contrast ratio between star and planet occurs. The baseline mission lasts 5 years and consists of approximately 200 individual target stars. Among these, 25 to 50 planetary systems can be studied spectroscopically, searching for gases such as CO2, H2O, CH4 and O3. Many of the key technologies required for the construction of Darwin have already been demonstrated and the remainder are estimated to be mature in the near future. Darwin is a mission that will ignite intense interest in both the research community and the wider public.
Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) allow high precision observation of the cosmic plasma at redshift z~1100. After the success of the NASA satellite COBE, that in 1992 provided the first detection of the CMB anisotropy, results from many ground-based and balloon-borne experiments have showed a remarkable consistency between different results and provided quantitative estimates of fundamental cosmological properties. During the current year the team of the NASA WMAP satellite has released the first improved full-sky maps of the CMB since COBE, leading to a deeper insight in the origin and evolution of the Universe. The ESA satellite Planck, scheduled for launch in 2007, is designed to provide the ultimate measurement of the CMB temperature anisotropy over the full sky, with an accuracy that will be limited only by astrophysical foregrounds, and robust detection of polarisation anisotropy. Planck will observe the sky with two instruments over a wide spectral band (the Low Frequency Instrument, based on coherent radiometers, from 30 to 70 GHz and the High Frequency Instrument, based on bolometric detectors, from 100 to 857 GHz). The mission performances will improve dramatically the scientific return compared to WMAP. Furthermore the LFI radiometers (as well as some of the HFI bolometers) are intrinsically sensitive to polarisation so that by combining the data from different receivers it will be possible to measure accurately the E mode and to detect the B mode of the polarisation power spectrum. Planck sensitivity will offer also the possibility to detect the non-Gaussianities imprinted in the CMB.
Models of quantum systems on curved space-times lack sufficient experimental verification. Some speculative theories suggest that quantum properties, such as entanglement, may exhibit entirely different behavior to purely classical systems. By measuring this effect or lack thereof, we can test the hypotheses behind several such models. For instance, as predicted by Ralph and coworkers [T C Ralph, G J Milburn, and T Downes, Phys. Rev. A, 79(2):22121, 2009, T C Ralph and J Pienaar, New Journal of Physics, 16(8):85008, 2014], a bipartite entangled system could decohere if each particle traversed through a different gravitational field gradient. We propose to study this effect in a ground to space uplink scenario. We extend the above theoretical predictions of Ralph and coworkers and discuss the scientific consequences of detecting/failing to detect the predicted gravitational decoherence. We present a detailed mission design of the European Space Agencys (ESA) Space QUEST (Space - Quantum Entanglement Space Test) mission, and study the feasibility of the mission schema.
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