Related papers: FIRST Explorer -- An innovative low-cost passive f…
Scientific research is a continuous process, and the speed of future progress can be estimated by the pace of finding explanations for previous research questions. In this observers based view of stellar pulsation and asteroseismology, we…
Low frequency radio waves, while challenging to observe, are a rich source of information about pulsars. The LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) is a new radio interferometer operating in the lowest 4 octaves of the ionospheric "radio window":…
Course estimation is a key component for the development of autonomous navigation systems for robots. While state-of-the-art methods widely use visual-based algorithms, it is worth noting that they all fail to deal with the complexity of…
By providing sensitive sub-arcsecond images and integral field spectroscopy in the 25 - 400 micron wavelength range, a far-IR interferometer will revolutionize our understanding of planetary system formation, reveal otherwise-undetectable…
The growing interest in space activities has led to the emergence of new space operators and innovative mission concepts. Small satellites such as CubeSats reduce mission costs and are typically deployed in constellations or formation…
The Virtual Telescope for X-Ray Observations (VTXO) is an Astrophysics SmallSat mission being developed to demonstrate 10-milliarcsecond X-ray imaging using a Phase Fresnel Lense (PFL) based space telescope. PFLs promise to provide several…
Robust cooperative formation control is investigated in this paper for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles in close formation flight to save energy. A novel cooperative control method is developed. The concept of virtual structure is…
The idea behind FIRST (Fibered Imager foR a Single Telescope) is to use single-mode fibers to combine multiple apertures in a pupil plane as such as to synthesize a bigger aperture. The advantages with respect to a pure imager are i)…
Explorers have made breakthroughs in many fields of astrophysics. The science from both these missions contributed to three Nobel Prizes - Giacconi (2002), Mather, and Smoot (2006). Explorers have: marked the definitive beginning of…
The autonomous operation of flexible-wing aircraft is technically challenging and has never been presented within literature. The lack of an exact modeling framework is due to the complex nonlinear aerodynamic relationships governed by the…
This paper studies the formation mission design problem for commercial aircraft in the presence of uncertainties. Specifically, it considers uncertainties in the departure times of the aircraft and in the fuel burn savings for the trailing…
The WFIRST microlensing mission will measure precise light curves and relative parallaxes for millions of stars, giving it the potential to characterize short-period transiting planets all along the line of sight and into the galactic…
WFIRST is the highest priority space mission of the Decadal review, however, it is unlikely to begin in this decade primarily due to a anticipated NASA budget that is unlikely to have sufficient resources to fund such a mission. For this…
Free-floating planets (FFPs) are the lightest products of star formation and they carry important information on the initial conditions of the environment in which they were formed. They were first discovered in the 2000s but still few of…
The Planet Formation Imager (PFI) is a future kilometric-baseline infrared interferometer to image the complex physical processes of planet formation. Technologies that could be used to transport starlight to a central beam-combining…
This paper provides a preliminary study for an efficient learning algorithm by reasoning the error from first principle physics to generate learning signals in near real time. Motivated by iterative learning control (ILC), this learning…
Quadrotors are agile. Unlike most other machines, they can traverse extremely complex environments at high speeds. To date, only expert human pilots have been able to fully exploit their capabilities. Autonomous operation with on-board…
Complex non-linear and dynamic processes lie at the heart of the planet formation process. Through numerical simulation and basic observational constraints, the basics of planet formation are now coming into focus. High resolution imaging…
LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) is an innovative radio telescope optimized for the frequency range 30-240 MHz. The telescope is realized as a phased aperture array without any moving parts. Digital beam forming allows the telescope to point to…
A plethora of astronomical science cases can only be achieved with high angular resolution observations, and we can expect the number of these to grow as astronomers are constrained by the size limitations of single-aperture space…