Related papers: Locating the LCROSS Impact Craters
High-precision corner-cube retroreflectors (CCRs) are critical for advanced lunar laser ranging (LLR) because they enable sub-millimeter-scale measurements of the Earth-Moon distance -- a level of precision essential for rigorous tests of…
Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) measurements are crucial for advanced exploration of the laws of fundamental gravitational physics and geophysics. Current LLR technology allows us to measure distances to the Moon with a precision approaching 1…
Aims. Particles ejected from the lunar surface via hypervelocity impacts form a torus between the Earth and the Moon. According to our previous study (Yang et al., A\&A, 659, A120), among them about $2.3\times10^{-4}\,\mathrm{kg/s}$…
The surface conditions of terrestrial bodies strongly reflect their geological evolutionary processes and vary among various terrestrial bodies. This diversity is attributed to variations in the timescales of boulder formation through…
The amount and distribution of water on the lunar surface are related to the input and production of water by solar wind and meteoroid bombardment, balanced by photodestruction and mobility across the surface. Using the Stratospheric…
New low-mass particles with very small couplings to standard model particles that travel significant distances before decaying are interesting candidates to address some of the most intriguing questions of modern physics. In this paper, I…
We present a study of the source positioning accuracy of the LECS and MECS instruments on-board BeppoSAX. From the analysis of a sample of archival images we find that a systematic error, which depends on the spacecraft roll angle and has…
A precise measurement of the total cross section and the coulomb scattering at the LHC requires the observation of elastically scatteredparticles at extremely small angles (14 microrad, -t < 0.01 GeV**2 for the first case; 3 microrad,…
We have performed a simulation of a next generation sky survey's (Pan-STARRS 1) efficiency for detecting Earth-impacting asteroids. The steady-state sky-plane distribution of the impactors long before impact is concentrated towards small…
We present an analysis of surveying the inner Solar System for objects that may pose some threat to the Earth. Most of the analysis is based on understanding the capability provided by Sentinel, a concept for an infrared space-based…
We conducted an extensive CCD search for faint, unresolved dwarf galaxies of very low surface brightness in the whole Centaurus group region encompassing the Cen A and M 83 subgroups lying at a distance of roughly 4 and 5 Mpc, respectively.…
Small scale jet-induced erosion experiments are useful for identifying the scaling of erosion with respect to the various physical parameters (gravity, grain size, gas velocity, gas density, grain density, etc.), and because they provide a…
We conducted one blind and three targeted searches for millisecond and submillisecond pulsars. The blind search was conducted within 3deg of the Galactic plane and at longitudes between 20 and 110deg. It takes 22073 pointings to cover this…
Tetrahedral configurations of spacecraft on unperturbed heliocentric orbits allow for highly precise observations of small spatial changes in the gravitational field, especially those affecting the gravity gradient tensor (GGT). The…
An efficient characterization of scientifically significant locations is essential prior to the return of humans to the Moon. The highest resolution imagery acquired from orbit of south-polar shadowed regions and other relevant locations…
Orbit-determination programs find the orbit solution that best fits a set of observations by minimizing the RMS of the residuals of the fit. For near-Earth asteroids, the uncertainty of the orbit solution may be compatible with trajectories…
The Large Observatory For X-ray Timing (LOFT), currently in an assessment phase in the framework the ESA M3 Cosmic Vision programme, is an innovative medium-class mission specifically designed to answer fundamental questions about the…
Very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations of active galactic nuclei at millimeter wavelengths have the power to reveal the launching and initial collimation region of extragalactic radio jets, down to $10-100$ gravitational…
We are preparing a telescope system to carry out a survey of detection and analysis of lunar impact flashes. In the framework of this project, here we present all necessary methods to automatically identify these luminous events, their…
We report on observations made of the ~36km diameter crater, Louth, in the north polar region of Mars (at 70{\deg}N, 103.2{\deg}E). High-resolution imagery from the instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft has been…