Related papers: Optimal impact strategies for asteroid deflection
There are thousands of asteroids in near-Earth space and millions in the Main Belt. They are diverse in physical properties and composition and are time capsules of the early solar system. This makes them strategic locations for planetary…
In this paper a direct method based on a transcription by finite elements in time has been used to design optimal interplanetary trajectories, exploiting a combination of gravity assist maneuvers and low-thrust propulsion. A multiphase…
Operating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in complex environments that feature dynamic obstacles and external disturbances poses significant challenges, primarily due to the inherent uncertainty in such scenarios. Additionally, inaccurate…
We present a procedure for determination of positions and orbital elements, and associated uncertainties, of outer Solar System planets. The orbit-fitting procedure is greatly streamlined compared to traditional methods because acceleration…
We re-examine the method of deprojection of proper motions, which has been used for finding the velocity ellipsoid of stars in the nearby Galaxy. This method is only legitimate if the lines of sight to the individual stars are uncorrelated…
We review the available methods for estimating actions, angles and frequencies of orbits in both axisymmetric and triaxial potentials. The methods are separated into two classes. Unless an orbit has been trapped by a resonance, convergent,…
We propose a perturbative method to compute the deflection angle of both null and massive particles for source and detector at finite distance. This method applies universally to the motion of particles with general velocity in the…
This paper presents a decentralized, online planning approach for scalable maneuver planning for large constellations. While decentralized, rule-based strategies have facilitated efficient scaling, optimal decision-making algorithms for…
The paper provides a new approach to utilizing space environmental forces in time- and energy-optimal, propellant-less spacecraft rendezvous missions. Considering the nonlinear form of the relative dynamic equations, rendezvous missions are…
This study is aimed at answering the famous question of how the approximation errors at each iteration of Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) affect the quality of the final results considering the fact that errors at each iteration…
This paper proposes a solution for multiple-impulse orbital maneuvers near circular orbits for special cases where orbital observations are not globally available and the spacecraft is being observed through a limited window from a ground…
The catalog of km-sized near-Earth objects (NEOs) is nearly complete. Typical impact monitoring analyses search for possible impacts over the next 100 years and none of the km-sized objects represent an impact threat over that time…
Both null and timelike rays experience trajectory bending in a gravitational field. In this work, we systematically develop a perturbative method to compute the deflection angle of rays with general velocity $v$ in arbitrary static and…
Context: Observation of star occultations is a powerful tool to determine shapes and sizes of asteroids. This is key information necessary for studying the evolution of the asteroid belt and to calibrate indirect methods of size…
Most of the optimal guidance problems can be formulated as nonconvex optimization problems, which can be solved indirectly by relaxation, convexification, or linearization. Although these methods are guaranteed to converge to the global…
It has recently been shown by Egal et al. (2017) that some types of existing meteor in-atmosphere trajectory estimation methods may be less accurate than others, particularly when applied to high precision optical measurements. The…
Seismic shaking is an attractive mechanism to explain the destabilisation of regolith slopes and the regolith migration found on the surfaces of asteroids (Richardson et al. 2004; Miyamoto et al. 2007). Here, we use a continuum mechanics…
Neglecting small fragments in space debris evolutionary models can lead to a significant underestimation of the collision risk for operational satellites. However, when scaling down to the millimeter range, the debris population grows to…
In this paper, the trajectory planning problem for autonomous rendezvous and docking between a controlled spacecraft and a tumbling target is addressed. The use of a variable planning horizon is proposed in order to construct an appropriate…
Low-thrust trajectory design relies heavily on repeated evaluations of fuel consumption and transfer feasibility, which require expensive optimal control solutions. In this work, we show these quantities can be accurately approximated by…