These are items of interest to the interstellar exploration community that we’ve found in our quest for information that will help us advance toward our goals. If you know of anything we’ve overlooked, or any sources of such information we should monitor, or if you would like to be added to our IRG-updates mailing list and receive these updates in you email every weekday, please send that information to info@irg.space.
You can now search our database of interstellar updates and find items of interest to you.
Gradations of Panspermia
http://geopolicraticus.tumblr.com/post/174016333357/gradations-of-panspermia
House appropriations bill partially restores WFIRST funding
http://spacenews.com/house-appropriations-bill-partially-restores-wfirst-funding/
Sun flux variation due to the effects of orbiting planets. Case of study of a non-compact planetary system
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.06526
Polarization of Trappist-1 by the Transit of its Planets
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.06722
Radiation Pressure on a Diffractive Sailcraft
https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.02940
Measurements of Radiation Pressure owing to the Grating Momentum
https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.04774
Flying on a Rainbow: A Solar-Driven Diffractive Sailcraft
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.05864
Expanding cosmological civilizations on the back of an envelope
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.06329
1I/2017 ‘Oumuamua-like Interstellar Asteroids as Possible Messengers from the Dead Stars
https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.02658
Inner Super-Earths, Outer Gas Giants: How Pebble Isolation and Migration Feedback Keep Jupiters Cold
https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03648
Dynamical Constraints on Nontransiting Planets Orbiting TRAPPIST-1
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/aabee8
Theoretical validation of potential habitability via analytical and boosted tree methods: An optimistic study on recently discovered exoplanets
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213133717301105
Large Scale Searches for Brown Dwarfs and Free-Floating Planets
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.05661
Using Deep Space Climate Observatory Measurements to Study the Earth as An Exoplanet
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.05834
Formation of S-type planets in close binaries: scattering induced tidal capture of circumbinary planets
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.05868
HATS-59b,c: A Transiting Hot Jupiter and a Cold Massive Giant Planet Around a Sun-Like Star
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.05925
Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108556941
Exo-Milankovitch Cycles II: Climates of G-dwarf Planets in Dynamically Hot Systems
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.00283
An 8 Mearth super-Earth in a 2.2 day orbit around the K5V star K2-216
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04774
Tidal Evolution of Kepler lower-mass Planets
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04885
Modeling Martian Atmospheric Losses over Time: Implications for Exoplanetary Climate Evolution and Habitability
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.05016
A search for transiting planets in the β Pictoris system
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.05240
The dynamical evolution of transiting planetary systems including a realistic collision prescription
https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.08939
Project Dragonfly: Sail to the stars
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576517319136
Nanophotonic light sails for relativistic spaceflight by high-power laser beams
https://www.osapublishing.org/abstract.cfm?uri=CLEO_QELS-2018-FF1H.6
Materials challenges for the Starshot lightsail
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-018-0075-8
Propulsion system (possibly applicable to interstellar missions)
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ef/c8/ad/19693f1eed3a8e/US20180106219A1.pdf
Interplanetary spacecraft using fusion-powered constant-acceleration thrust (possibly applicable to interstellar missions)
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/7f/1d/76/adc5d2c41b2ea6/US20180105292A1.pdf
House spending bill could brighten prospects for two giant telescopes
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/house-spending-bill-could-brighten-prospects-two-giant-telescopes
The Evo-SETI unit of evolution is EE = Earth evolution = 25.575 bit
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576517316491
Two Thousand Kepler Phase Curves from Phasma
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04121
Exoplanet recycling in massive white-dwarf debris discs
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04429
