Related papers: FIRST Explorer -- An innovative low-cost passive f…
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) research requires the integration of cutting-edge technology into existing autopilot frameworks. This process can be arduous, requiring extensive resources, time, and detailed knowledge of the existing system.…
Very low Earth orbits (VLEO), typically classified as orbits below approximately 450 km in altitude, have the potential to provide significant benefits to spacecraft over those that operate in higher altitude orbits. This paper provides a…
An astronomical complex intended to detect optical transients (OTs) in a wide field and follow them up with high time resolution investigation is described.
The autonomous formation flight of fixed-wing drones is hard when the coordination requires the actuation over their speeds since they are critically bounded and aircraft are mostly designed to fly at a nominal airspeed. This paper proposes…
Lightsails are a highly promising spacecraft concept that has attracted interest in recent years due to its potential to travel at near-relativistic speeds. Such speeds, which current conventional crafts cannot reach, offer tantalizing…
Precise measurements of the fundamental properties of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs are key to understanding the physics underlying their formation and evolution. While there has been great progress over the last decade in studying the…
Autonomous flight of flapping-wing robots is a major challenge for robot perception. Most of the previous sense-and-avoid works have studied the problem of obstacle avoidance for flapping-wing robots considering only static obstacles. This…
Exploration and collision-free navigation through an unknown environment is a fundamental task for autonomous robots. In this paper, a novel exploration strategy for Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) is presented. The goal of the exploration…
This paper addresses the problem of bearing leader-follower formation control in three-dimensional space by exploring the persistence of excitation (PE) of the desired formation. Using only bearing and relative velocity measurements,…
The specific objective of this paper is to develop a tool that calculates the optimal trajectory of the follower aircraft as it completes a formation rejoin, and then maintains the formation position, defined as a ring of points, until a…
This article presents a feedback control algorithm for electromagnetic formation flying with constraints on the satellites' states and control inputs. The algorithm combines several key techniques. First, we use alternating magnetic field…
The operation of satellites in very low Earth orbit (VLEO) has been linked to a variety of benefits to both the spacecraft platform and mission design. Critically, for Earth observation (EO) missions a reduction in altitude can enable…
UVEX is a proposed medium class Explorer mission designed to provide crucial missing capabilities that will address objectives central to a broad range of modern astrophysics. The UVEX design has two co-aligned wide-field imagers operating…
High-speed trajectory planning through unknown environments requires algorithmic techniques that enable fast reaction times while maintaining safety as new information about the operating environment is obtained. The requirement of…
Technology has advanced to the point that it is possible to image the entire sky every night and process the data in real time. The sky is hardly static: many interesting phenomena occur, including variable stationary objects such as stars…
Recently, we developed effective fly-by (EFB) waveforms designed to model the burst of gravitational radiation from highly eccentric binaries. We here present a faster to evaluate frequency domain EFB waveform. The waveform is constructed…
The Far-InfraRed Spectroscopic Explorer (FIRSPEX) is a candidate mission in response to a bi-lateral Small-mission call issued by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). FIRSPEX is a small satellite (~1m…
In recent years, the field of aerial robotics has witnessed significant progress, finding applications in diverse domains, including post-disaster search and rescue operations. Despite these strides, the prohibitive acquisition costs…
Current and future astronomical survey facilities provide a remarkably rich opportunity for transient astronomy, combining unprecedented fields of view with high sensitivity and the ability to access previously unexplored wavelength…
This work presents a closed-loop guidance algorithm for six-degrees of freedom spacecraft rendezvous with a passive target flying in an eccentric orbit. The main assumption is that the chaser vehicle has an attitude control system, based on…