Advancements in ESA's future science missions

Answering fundamental questions ranging from how the Solar System works, what the conditions for planet formation and for emergence of life are, to how the Universe formed and what it is made of is what Cosmic Vision, the long-term science program of the European Space Agency, aims at. The first two medium-class missions for the program, being Solar Orbiter, a mission aimed at observing in detail the Sun and its environment, and Euclid, a dark energy mission, for launch in 2017 and 2020, had been approved. Also the first large-class mission JUICE, one of the pillars of the cosmic vision program, has been selected. This mission will explore the icy moons in the Jovian system, with a target launch in 2022. For the third medium-class mission in the program, with a launch by 2024, studies of four candidates have been finalized: EChO - the Exoplanet Characterization Observatory; LOFT - the Large Observatory for X-Ray Timing; Marco Polo R - a sample return mission of material from a primitive near Earth asteroid for analysis in ground based laboratories and STEQUEST - the Space-Time Explorer and Quantum Equivalence Principle Space Test. In addition, a fifth candidate, Plato, a mission to observe planetary transients and oscillations of stars, is retained as a candidate. As a novel component in the Cosmic Vision program, the first small mission, CHEOPS, a mission to characterize exo-planets, is in implementation. Following a call for large-class mission opportunities for launches in 2028 and 2034, two science themes have been selected: the 'hot and energetic Universe', to be pursued by implementing a large collecting area X-ray observatory, and the 'gravitational Universe', to be pursued by implementing a gravitational wave observatory. This paper presents the progress in science payload definition and optimization for the mission candidates under assessment, and highlights the critical technology development required for the future missions.