Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the - Solar System ...

FIGURE 2.3 Sand dunes on Mars photographed by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. SOURCE:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona.
RELATIONSHIPS TO OTHER NASA SCIENCE PROGRAMS
Planetary science activities at NASA are strongly coupled to the agency’s other science
programs: Astrophysics, Heliophysics, and to a limited extent, Earth Science divisions. Each is addressed
below in more detail.
NASA’s Astrophysics Division
The major science goals of the Astrophysics Division are to discover how the universe works,
explore how the universe began and evolved, and to search planetary environments that may hold keys to
life’s origins or even might themselves sustain life. 2 Strong scientific synergy exists between the studies
of extrasolar planets and Earth’s planetary neighborhood. The former provides an immense variety of
planetary systems in their structures and stages of evolution: known exoplanets now range from super-
Jupiters to super-Earths. The latter affords the opportunity for detailed—often in situ—examination of the
formation and evolution of one specific planetary system. A less obvious synergy is that space-based
telescopes can support a host of user communities. The Hubble Space Telescope, for example, is a
powerful observational tool for remote sensing of solar system objects, as well as a facility that probes to
ultradeep corners of the cosmos. The same is true of other Astrophysics Division assets, such as the
Spitzer Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared
Astronomy, FUSE, the International Ultraviolet Explorer, WISE, IRAS, and others. The James Webb
Space Telescope will also make significant contributions to planetary science. Chapter 10 contains
details of the contributions ground- and space-based telescopes make to planetary science.
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