A forward-looking perspective on mission synergies in asteroseismology

Over the past 25 years, the number of stars with precise space-based time-domain photometry has increased by roughly four orders of magnitude, largely driven by CoRoT, Kepler, and TESS. Remarkably, we are now on the verge of yet another order-of-magnitude leap, with missions such as Roman, PLATO, and Earth 2.0 coming into operation within the next couple of years.

Cumulative number of stars with precise space-based time-domain photometry as a function of time. Symbol size denotes the number of stars (order-of-magnitude estimate) observed by the respective mission.

These future gains are, however, not driven by a single mission concept. Roman and HAYDN will expand the regime of deep, narrow-field observations with fine angular resolution, which is crucial for dense stellar fields; whereas PLATO and Earth 2.0 populate the wide-field regime with coarse to moderate angular resolution, monitoring large samples of relatively bright field stars. So rather than competing directly, these missions are complementary and naturally open the door to a number of synergies.

Pixel scale as a function of the total field-of-view area. Symbol size denotes the typical duration of continuous light curves.

This past summer, I gave two invited talks—at TASC10/KASC17 in Aarhus, Denmark, and at the 2nd Annual Science Meeting of the Earth 2.0 Space Mission in Kunming, China—in which I presented a forward-looking perspective on mission synergies in asteroseismology. Rather than attempting a comprehensive review, I highlighted a few overarching opportunities that I find particularly promising, with an emphasis on upcoming missions. The talk presented at TASC10/KASC17 is available via Zenodo here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21340089.