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Cosmic Visions

Cosmic visions is a European Space Agency initiative to plan missions to be launched between 2015-2025. And there is no shortage of ideas!

Missions include:

  • XEUS - the next generation X-ray telescope, designed to look at the hottest and most violent regions of space
  • LISA - a mission to detect and measure gravity waves, emitted when massive objects violently collide
  • SPICA - a mission to explore how stars and planets form
  • PLATO aims to search for planets orbiting distant stars
  • TANDEM will scrutinise Saturn's moons Titan (an Earth-like organic-rich world) and Enceladus.
  • LAPLACE would explore Jupiter's moon Europa - and world covered in ice but with a water ocean beneath the surface
  • MARCO-POLO is a mission to return a sample from a near-Earth asteroid, which could be key if we ever need to deflect an asteroid in the future
  • CROSS-SCALE plans to study astrophysical plasma's in all regions of space.
  • SPACE - a mission to study how the Universe evolved in infrared wavelengths
  • DUNE - designed to study dark matter and dark energy in the universe

Not all these missions will become reality.

Which ones would you choose?


DUNE A wide field, visible and near-infrared space imager, with the primary goal of studying dark energy and dark matter with unprecedented precision by using weak gravitational lensing
SPACE A near-infra-red surveyor dedicated to an all-sky, spectroscopic survey of a large number of galaxies, aiming to obtain information on the evolution of galaxies in the Universe

XEUS New generation, space based X-ray observatory dedicated to investigations on the evolution of the Universe at higher energies and based on a two spacecraft formation concept

SPICA European contribution to the Japanese SPICA mission, dedicated to Medium and Far Infrared astronomy and to investigations on the origins of galaxies and planets

PLATO Ultra-high precision, visible and near-infrared photometry mission, dedicated to investigations on exo-planets transiting in front of a large sample of stars as well as to investigations on the seismic oscillations of these parent stars

Marco Polo In-situ measurements and sample return from a primitive Near-Earth Object (asteroid or dormant comet) in order to reveal information about the early formation processes of the Solar System and the role of minor bodies in the origin and evolution of life on Earth

TandEM In-situ exploration of the two Saturn moons: Titan and Enceladus in order to gain knowledge on their geological, chemical and evolutionary history and possibly understand their astrobiological potential

Cross-Scale Quantifying the coupling in plasmas between different physical scales in order to address fundamental questions such as how shocks accelerate and heat particles or how reconnection converts magnetic energy
LAPLACE In-depth, quantitative study of the Jupiter system and its moons, which focuses on the formation of the Jupiter System, the way how the Jupiter system works, and whether Europa is habitable
LISA A three-spacecraft interferometer with an arm length of 5 million kilometres and the primary goal to detect and observe gravitational waves from astronomical sources in a frequency range of 0.0001 to 0.1 Hz

The above banners have been taken from the ESA website.

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Posted by Dr Darren Baskill (ROG Astronomer) on April 15, 2008 5:45 PM |

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on April 15, 2008 5:45 PM.

The previous post in this blog was The Sky Tonight - April 2008.

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