| Session Details | |
| Section | PS - Planetary Sciences |
| Session Title | Missions and Surveys: Drivers of Future Solar System Science |
| Main Convener | Dr. Henry H. Hsieh (Planetary Science Institute, United States) |
| Co-convener(s) | Dr. Jian-Yang Li (Planetary Science Institute, United States) Dr. Makoto Yoshikawa (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Japan) |
| Session Description | Space missions recently or currently in flight or under development promise to revolutionize our understanding of their respective targets. The wealth of data returned by the Dawn, Rosetta, and New Horizons missions has already produced amazing results and will be analyzed for years to come. Sample-return missions Hayabusa 2 and OSIRIS-REx are currently en route to primitive asteroids Ryugu and Bennu. Newly selected NASA Discovery missions Lucy and Psyche to visit and study the Jovian Trojans and the unique metal asteroid Psyche are now in development. Finally, at the intersection of science and industry, interest in asteroid mining is increasing, providing both more reasons and means to improve and expand efforts to discover and characterize the population of small bodies in our solar system. On the ground and in space, currently operational facilities aimed at surveying large portions of the sky have already substantially impacted planetary astronomy. The Catalina Sky Survey, Pan-STARRS1, NEOWISE, and Palomar Transient Factory surveys have greatly increased the number of known small bodies in our solar system from potentially hazardous near-Earth objects to distant comets, and provided new insights by allowing physical parameters to be determined for far larger samples of objects than have previously been achieved and discovering rare objects and events like main-belt comets and asteroid disruptions. Surveys like the Hyper-SuprimeCam survey and Gaia are already making substantial contributions to solar system science, where future survey facilities like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and the WFIRST infrared survey spacecraft will have even greater impacts. Considering the enormous importance that space missions and ground- and space-based surveys will have for solar system science in the future, we propose to convene a session to discuss these various efforts and their expected individual and cumulative impacts. |