Related papers: A Method for Establishing a Station-Keeping, Strat…
Low-level clouds are ubiquitous in Earth's atmosphere, playing a crucial role in transporting heat, moisture, and momentum across the planet. Their evolution and interaction with other atmospheric components, such as aerosols, are essential…
The recent years have witnessed increased development of small, autonomous fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). In order to unlock widespread applicability of these platforms, they need to be capable of operating under a variety of…
A new opportunity for astronomy, cosmology, physics, and atmospheric observations is the possibility to fly stratospheric payloads at 30 - 40 km of altitude during the polar night. The absence of solar irradiation for long periods, and the…
We present the results of a study along with a first prototype of a high precision system (? 1 arcsec) for pointing and tracking light (near-infrared) telescopes on board stratospheric balloons. Such a system is essentially composed by a…
Turbulence is omnipresent in the atmosphere and a long-standing scientific conundrum that makes flight complex. This complexity is little understood; surprisingly, when turbulence arises, air vehicles struggle while birds seem to thrive.…
The capability of maintaining two satellites in precise relative position, stable in a celestial coordinate system, would enable major advances in a number of scientific disciplines and with a variety of types of instrumentation. The common…
Aerial robots are evolving from avoiding obstacles to exploiting the environmental contact interactions for navigation, exploration and manipulation. A key challenge in such aerial physical interactions lies in handling uncertain contact…
The deployment of Aerial Base Stations (ABSs) mounted on board Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is emerging as a promising technology to provide connectivity in areas where terrestrial infrastructure is insufficient or absent. This may occur…
A system consisting of two conservative, oppositely driven species of particles with excluded volume interaction alone is studied on a torus. The system undergoes a phase transition between a homogeneous and an inhomogeneous phase, as the…
In the stably stratified ocean, small-scale turbulence is important for vertical exchange and hence for the mixing of water masses and suspended matter. To observationally study turbulent motions and the buoyancy- and shear-generators…
Aerocapture uses atmospheric drag to decelerate spacecraft and achieve orbit insertion. One of the significant risks associated with aerocapture is the uncertainty in the atmospheric density, particularly for outer planets. The paper…
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…
Rocket technology, originally developed for military applications, has provided a low-cost observing platform to carry critical and rapid-response scientific investigations for over 70 years. Even with the development of launch vehicles…
The Voyager spacecraft is now approaching the edge of the solar system. Near the boundary between the solar system and the interstellar medium we find that an unstable ``jet-sheet'' forms. The jet-sheet oscillates up and down due to a…
The historical development of ground based astronomical telescopes leads us to expect that space-based astronomical telescopes will need to be operational for many decades. The exchange of scientific instruments in space will be a…
Plasma turbulence involves complex, nonlinear interactions of electromagnetic fields and charged particles across multiple scales. Studying these phenomena in space plasmas, like the solar wind, is facilitated by the intrinsic scale…
Theory and computations are provided for building of optimal (minimum weight) solid space towers (mast) up to one hundred kilometers in height. These towers can be used for tourism; scientific observation of space, observation of the Earth…
A physically realistic stellar wind model based on Alfv\'en wave dissipation has been used to simulate the wind from Barnard's Star and to estimate the conditions at the location of its recently discovered planetary companion. Such models…
Instabilities and turbulence extending to the smallest dynamical scales play important roles in the deposition of energy and momentum by gravity waves throughout the atmosphere. However, these dynamics and their effects have been impossible…
Stellar winds interact with the partially ionized interstellar medium (ISM), forming astrospheres. A key feature of this interaction is the hydrogen wall - secondary interstellar atoms produced via charge exchange near the tangential…