Related papers: FIRST Explorer -- An innovative low-cost passive f…
The Planet Formation Imager (PFI) project aims to image the period of planet assembly directly, resolving structures as small as a giant planet's Hill sphere. These images will be required in order to determine the key mechanisms for planet…
The increased need in pointing performance for Earth observation and science Space missions together with the use of lighter and flexible structures directly come with the need of a robust pointing performance budget from the very beginning…
Small free-flying spacecraft can provide vital extravehicular activity (EVA) services like inspection and repair for future orbital outposts like the Lunar Gateway. Operating adjacent to delicate space station and microgravity targets,…
Present and future space missions rely on systems of increasingly demanding performance for being successful. Drag-free technology is one of the technologies that is fundamental for LISA-Pathfinder, an ESA mission whose launch is planned…
The advent of extremely large telescopes will bring unprecedented light-collecting power and spatial resolution, but it will also lead to a significant increase in the size and complexity of focal-plane instruments. The use of freeform…
Modeling has been created for a Space-to-Surface system defined for an optimal trajectory for targeting in terminal phase with avoids an intercepting process. The modeling includes models for simulation atmosphere, speed of sound,…
The use of electric low-thrust propulsion systems for orbit maneuvers is becoming a popular choice among satellite manufacturers due to their inherent merits over their chemical counterparts. Many designers choose to incorporate multiple of…
The exploration of asteroids and comets is important in the quest for the formation of the Solar System and it is an important step for human space travel. Moving on the surface of asteroids is challenging for future robotic explorers due…
Long-baseline interferometry at optical and near-infrared wavelengths is an emerging technology which is quickly becoming a useful tool to investigate stellar atmospheres and to compare observations with models. Stellar atmosphere models…
Trajectory generation for fully autonomous flights of tail-sitter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) presents substantial challenges due to their highly nonlinear aerodynamics. In this paper, we introduce, to the best of our knowledge, the…
The ESPRI project relies on the astrometric capabilities offered by the PRIMA facility of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer for the discovery and study of planetary systems. Our survey consists of obtaining high-precision astrometry…
Simulations of dense stellar systems currently face two major hurdles, one astrophysical and one computational. The astrophysical problem lies in the fact that several major stages in binary evolution, such as common envelope evolution, are…
This work presents an innovative solution for robotic odometry, path planning and exploration in wild unknown environments, focusing on digital modelling. The approach uses a minimum cost formulation with pseudo-randomly generated…
This article introduces a formation shape control algorithm, in the optimal control framework, for steering an initial population of agents to a desired configuration via employing the Gromov-Wasserstein distance. The underlying dynamical…
The employment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the lowaltitude economy necessitates precise and real-time radio maps for reliable communication and safe navigation. However, constructing such maps is hindered by the infeasibility of…
Automated decision-making is becoming key for automated characterization including electron and scanning probe microscopies and nano indentation. Most machine learning driven workflows optimize a single predefined objective and tend to…
Observations that require large physical instrument dimensions and/or a considerable amount of cryogens, as it is the case for high spatial resolution far infrared (FIR) astronomy, currently still face technological limits for their…
Interstellar radar is a potential intermediate step between passive observation of exoplanets and interstellar exploratory missions. Compared to passive observation, it has the traditional advantages of radar astronomy. It can measure…
During the last few years, considerable effort has been directed towards large-scale (>> $1 Billion US) missions to detect and characterize earth-like planets around nearby stars, such as the Terrestrial Planet Finder Interferometer (TPF-I)…
High-Frequency (HF) radar is well suited to the surveillance of low-Earth-orbit space. For large targets, a small deployable HF radar is able to match the detection performance of much larger space surveillance radar systems operating at…