Sample One

This is an outline for the research paper. Please follow the instructions EXACTLY.

1) The topic can be any astronomy related scientific research program (e.g. a previous or future NASA mission, a privately funded program like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, etc. Some possibilities are listed below (by no means is this all, suitable projects are legion).

a) Planetary Missions: Cassini, Voyager, Viking, Mariner, Galileo, New Horizons, Pioneer, Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity, Mars missions, etc.

b) Extrasolar Planets: XO, CoRoT, Kepler, TPF (Terrestrial Planet Finder), SIM

c) Space Observatories: Chandra (x-ray), Spitzer (infrared), Compton (gamma-ray), Hubble (visible), James Webb, etc.

d) Cosmology and Big Bang Stuff: WMAP, Boomerang, COBE, Supernova Factory, etc.

e) Neutrino Experiments: Super Kamiokande, SNO, Homestake, Minos, etc.

f) Large Extragalactic Surveys: Sloan Digital Sky Survey, 2dF, etc.}

g) Galactic Structure things: GAIA, Hipparcos, SIM, etc.}

h) Dark Matter and Energy: CDMS, SNAP, Dark Energy Survey}

i) Gravity Stuff like: LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) and LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory), Gravity Probe-B, Beyond Einstein, etc.

j) There are many, many, many more possibilities (look at the ``missions'' pages of websites like www.nasa.gov, www.esa.int (European Space Agency), www.nasda.go.jp (Japanese space agency), these are just from the top of my head. I want them to give you an idea of what types of projects I'm speaking of.

2) For these papers you will want to describe the mission or scientific program, motivate the program (say why it is interesting, what important science will it provide, and why it deserves the (usually taxpayer) funding that it did or will get), and state some results or some of the expected results (please note that many of the above projects have multiple objectives, you do not need to address all of them if you don't wish to).

3) EXTREMELY...