Astronomy from the Moon: the next decades

Jan Harms is Professor of Physics at the Gran Sasso Science Institute in L’Aquila, Italy. He earned his PhD at the Leibniz University Hannover in 2006 and has since worked in the field of gravitational-wave detection as member of the LIGO and Virgo collaborations. Harms spent five years in the USA working at the University of Minnesota and Caltech before moving to Italy. He is member of the Instrument Science Board of the proposed next-generation detector Einstein Telescope. In 2020, he led a team that proposed the Lunar Gravitational-Wave Antenna (LGWA) in response to an ESA call of ideas. Today, he is coordinating the scientific collaboration that is carrying out the LGWA science studies and payload development.

Leon Koopmans is full professor at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute (University of Groningen, The Netherlands). He holds a PhD (2000) in astrophysics and spent time as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manchester, the California Institute of Technology and the Space Telescope Science Institute. He has two research lines: strong gravitational lensing and 21-cm Cosmology. Related to the latter, he is PI of both the LOFAR Epoch-of-Reionization and the NenuFAR Cosmic Dawn Key Science Projects, chaired the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) CD/EoR Science Working Group, chairs a Science Team preparing for a SKA Key Science Project, and is a founding member of the Dutch SKA consortium. He is involved in the Dutch-Chinese NCLE mission and the Chinese DSL concept and most recently proposed CoDEX, a space-based interferometer to observe the Dark Ages, as part of ESA’s Voyage 2050 process. 

Jean-Pierre Maillard, director of research emeritus from CNRS at Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, is a specialist in infrared astronomy from ground and from space through the development of high resolution Fourier transform spectrometers. He observed mainly from Mauna Kea in Hawaii, one of the best IR sites, with the Canada-France Hawaii Telescope, planetary and stellar atmospheres, star forming regions and the Galactic Center. He has been participating in several space proposals. He is currently involved in the definition of future missions to study the spectral distortions of the CMB.

Dr Iannis Dandouras is Research Director at CNRS, at the IRAP laboratory (Toulouse). His research interests include solar wind-magnetosphere coupling, terrestrial magnetosphere dynamics, and the dynamics of the inner magnetosphere (plasmasphere, ring current, radiation belts, exosphere, ion outflows and escape). Research interests also include the dynamics of the magnetospheres of other planets, Saturn’s magnetosphere and its interaction with the satellites and their exospheres, and the Moon’s plasma environment. He has been involved as PI in the Cluster 4-spacecraft mission, as Co-I in the Cassini mission to Saturn and the BepiColombo mission to Mercury and has been a member of the ESA Daedalus Mission Advisory Group. He has been leading the ESA Topical Team for the conceptual design of a space plasma physics payload onboard the Lunar Gateway, has published more than 300 papers and has also served as president of the Solar-Terrestrial Sciences Division of EGU.

Dr Anastasia Fialkov is a Royal Society University Research Chair (RS URF) and an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge. Anastasia works on a wide range of topics related to the first billion years of cosmic history including theoretical modelling and observations of the 21-cm signal of neutral hydrogen which carries information about astrophysical processes at cosmic dawn such as primordial star formation and the emergence of the first population of black holes. Anastasia is also passionate about the nature of dark matter and is currently looking for astrophysical manifestations of ultra-light dark matter particles in hydrodynamical numerical simulations. Prior to starting the position at Cambridge, Anastasia held prestigious research fellowships at the Ecole Normale Superiore in Paris and the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She spent part of her RS URF at Sussex University. Anastasia completed her PhD at Tel Aviv University, Israel. 

Daphne Stam studied Physics and Astronomy at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Her PhD research, on spectral variations in the polarisation of sunlight that is reflected by the Earth, was performed at the KNMI and the Vrije Universiteit.

As a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University, she worked on the analysis of observations of the Sun's giant planets, and subsequently worked with personal grants on polarisation signals of exoplanets at the University of Amsterdam and SRON, the Netherlands Space Research Institute. In 2012, Daphne took up a position at the rapidly expanding Planetary Exploration group at Aerospace Engineering at TU Delft, where she is currently Associate Professor of Planetary Sciences, focusing on spectropolarimetry, the modelling of reflection by atmospheres and surfaces of planets, including the Earth, around the Sun and beyond, and the development of LOUPE.

Andrew Siemion is Director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, Principal Investigator for the Breakthrough Listen Initiative and holder of the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute.  Andrew and his team oversee a global research program seeking to determine the prevalence of technologically capable life in the universe, leveraging world-class telescopes operating across the electromagnetic spectrum, data mining, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and deep partnerships with industry, private philanthropy, and national funding agencies.

Mihály Horányi joined the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) in 1992 and the Physics Department in 1999 at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His research interests include theoretical and experimental investigations of space and laboratory dusty plasmas. He served as a co-investigator for the dust instruments onboard the Ulysses, Galileo, and Cassini missions, and as a principal investigator for the dust instruments built by LASP: The Student Dust Counter (SDC) onboard New Horizons, the Cosmic Dust Experiment (CDE) onboard the AIM satellite, and the Lunar Dust Experiment LDEX onboard the LADEE mission. He is the Principal Investigator for the Interstellar Dust Experiment (IDEX) onboard the upcoming IMAP mission. He is the author of over 300 refereed publications and is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Geophysical Union. Asteroid 1998 AX9 is named 164701 Horányi by the International Astronomical Union, 2018.

Angeliki Kapoglou is an international expert in commercial space with a focus in lunar exploration, innovation and future studies. For four years, she has been part of ESA’s Human and Robotic Exploration Strategy team, assessing future lunar surface exploration scenarios and developing European priorities and activities for sustainable lunar development. Angeliki has also contributed to ESA’s space resources strategy, ESA’s LEO/Post-ISS commercialisation strategy, the Moonlight initiative (Lunar Communications & Navigation); and the newly established SOLARIS team, exploring the feasibility of Space-based Solar Power for Net Zero and energy security goals. Passionate about lunar governance and space policy issues, Angeliki is also a fellow with the Open Lunar Foundation and a convener of the Moon Dialogs Initiative. Before that, Angeliki spent two years at one of the world’s leading centres for innovation, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University. In the past, she also worked at CERN and NASA’s JPL Innovation Foundry. 

Dr Martin Elvis is a highly cited astrophysicist (with over 30,000 peer citations) who has used most large space based observatories to publish some 450 papers on supermassive black holes, seen as quasars, out to the edge of the universe over the course of many years. Lately, concerned about the growing cost of space telescopes, he has turned to researching the astronomy needed to enable asteroid mining, with a view to cutting those costs in the long run. He has published widely on issues related to asteroid and lunar mining, including legal and policy issues, and on the space economy. He is unduly proud that he is (probably) the first professional astronomer to visit the Harvard Business School on business. He obtained his PhD in X-ray astronomy in 1978 in the UK, and has worked at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian  ever since on a series of space X-ray telescopes, culminating with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Member of the Aspen Center for Physics, and is past-Chair of the Hubble Space Telescope Users’ Committee and of the High Energy Division of the American Astronomical Society. Asteroid 9283 Martinelvis is named after him.

Alanna Krolikowski is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), where she specializes in policy for science, technology, and innovation. Her research and teaching focuses on policy for space activities, the Chinese and US innovation systems, and international relations. Before joining Missouri S&T, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a visiting professor at the University of Göttingen. She obtained her PhD from the University of Toronto.  

Dr Phil Bull is a theoretical and observational cosmologist at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. He completed his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at the Universities of Manchester and Oxford respectively, before going on to postdoctoral positions at the University of Oslo, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, and the University of California at Berkeley, followed by a lectureship at Queen Mary University of London. His scientific interests are in understanding the large-scale structure of the Universe, particularly using observations from large optical and radio surveys such as LSST, SKA, MeerKAT, and HERA. His current research centres around 21cm intensity mapping at low and high redshift.

Professor Sara Seager is a Professor of Physics, Planetary Science, and Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she holds the Class of 1941 Professor Chair. Her ground-breaking research ranges from the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres to innovative theories about life on other worlds to development of novel space mission concepts. She was the Deputy Science Director of the NASA mission TESS; PI of the JPL-MIT CubeSat ASTERIA; and has had numerous leadership roles in concept development for space-based direct imaging missions to find a true Earth analog orbiting a Sun-like star. Most recently she focuses on the possibility of life in sulfuric acid and leads the Morning Star Missions to Venus. Her accolades include a MacArthur fellowship, membership in US National Academy of Sciences, and an appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Dr Martin Elvis is a highly cited astrophysicist (with over 30,000 peer citations) who has used most large space based observatories to publish some 450 papers on supermassive black holes, seen as quasars, out to the edge of the universe over the course of many years. Lately, concerned about the growing cost of space telescopes, he has turned to researching the astronomy needed to enable asteroid mining, with a view to cutting those costs in the long run. He has published widely on issues related to asteroid and lunar mining, including legal and policy issues, and on the space economy. He is unduly proud that he is (probably) the first professional astronomer to visit the Harvard Business School on business. He obtained his PhD in X-ray astronomy in 1978 in the UK, and has worked at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian  ever since on a series of space X-ray telescopes, culminating with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Member of the Aspen Center for Physics, and is past-Chair of the Hubble Space Telescope Users’ Committee and of the High Energy Division of the American Astronomical Society. Asteroid 9283 Martinelvis is named after him.