Related papers: Fast E-sail Uranus entry probe mission
Solar sail technology is ready to be deployed in a satellite mission carrying a science-grade magnetometer. In preparation for such a mission, it is essential to characterize the interactions between the sail and the ambient plasma that…
Attempts to use Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) flow for propulsion have been made since the last century [1]. Limited success has been registered particularly due to the inhomogeneous generation of the thrust, and also the very light weight and…
Uranus has a tilted rotation axis, which is supposed to be caused by a giant impact. In general, an impact event also changes the internal compositional distribution and drives mass ejection from the planet, which may provide the origin of…
Venus is known for its extreme surface temperature and its sulfuric acid clouds. But the cloud layers on Venus have similar temperature and pressure conditions to those on the surface of Earth and are conjectured to be a possible habitat…
The escalating accumulation of orbital debris threatens the sustainability of space operations, necessitating active removal solutions that overcome the limitations of current fuel-dependent methods. To address this, this study introduces a…
The Extreme Universe Space Observatory on a Super Pressure Balloon 1 (EUSO-SPB1) was launched in 2017 April from Wanaka, New Zealand. The plan of this mission of opportunity on a NASA super pressure balloon test flight was to circle the…
Collisionless shock waves, ubiquitous in the universe, are crucial for particle acceleration in various astrophysical systems. Currently, the heliosphere is the only natural environment available for their in situ study. In this work, we…
The high-speed solar wind is typically the simplest and least stochastic type of large-scale plasma flow in the heliosphere. For much of the solar cycle, it is connected magnetically to large polar coronal holes on the Sun's surface.…
Leveraging advancements in micro-scale technology, we propose a fleet of autonomous, low-cost, small solar sails for interplanetary exploration. The Berkeley Low-cost Interplanetary Solar Sail (BLISS) project aims to utilize small-scale…
A central question surrounding possible human exploration of Mars is whether crewed missions can be supported by available technologies using in situ resources. Here, we show that photovoltaics-based power systems would be adequate and…
Pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) are outstanding accelerators in Nature, in the sense that they accelerate electrons up to the radiation reaction limit. Motivated by this observation, this paper examines the possibility that young pulsar wind…
Solar wind fluctuations, such as magnetic field or velocity, show power law power spectra suggestive both of an inertial range of intermittent turbulence (with $\sim -5/3$ exponent) and at lower frequencies, of fluctuations of coronal…
Recent successes in the deployment of sails in space have reduced the risk associated with solar sailing missions. The attitude control requirements for a solar sailing mission is low with only slow attitude maneuvers needed to maintain a…
Solar energy is the most convenient and reliable energy source among all renewable energy resources and an efficient photovoltaic device is required to convert this energy into utilizable energy. Different types of solar cells (SC) are…
Weakly collisional plasmas are subject to nonlinear relaxation processes, which can operate at rates much faster than the particle collision frequencies. This causes the plasma to respond like a magnetised fluid despite having long particle…
Launching orbital and suborbital rockets from a high altitude is beneficial because of e.g. nozzle optimisation and reduced drag. Aeroplanes and gas balloons have been used for the purpose. Here we present a concept where a balloon is…
The latest and most advanced effort towards a space-based optical cosmic ray detector developed within the Joint Experiment Mission for the Extreme Universe Space Observatory (JEM-EUSO) collaboration was the Extreme Universe Space…
In this work, the orbital evolution of these objects that are located in the geostationary orbit (GEO) is analyzed. Knowing this, the possibility of using a solar sail is considered to help to clean the space environment. The main natural…
Galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles (SEPs) affect the performance of instruments carried on board space missions and are the source of the absorbed dose to astronauts. Particles above 100 MeV are the most penetrating. The…
The design of mission scenarios for the flyby investigation of nearby star systems by probes launched using directed energy is addressed. Multiple probes are launched with a fixed launch infrastructure, and download of scientific data…