Related papers: Debris Engine: A Potential Thruster for Space Debr…
A method for asteroid deflection that makes use of a spacecraft moving back and forth on a segment of an appropriate Keplerian orbit about the asteroid is described and evaluated. It is shown that, on average, the spacecraft describing such…
Previously we presented a numerical model that predicts trajectories of lunar dust, soil, and gravel blown by the engine exhaust of a lunar lander. The model uses the gas density, velocity vector field, and temperature predicted by…
In this paper, the repeat-groundtrack orbit maintenance problem is addressed for spacecraft driven by electric propulsion. An adaptive solution is proposed, which combines an hysteresis controller and a recursive least squares filter. The…
Space debris larger than 1 cm can damage space instruments and impact Earth. The low-Earth orbits (at heights smaller than 2000 km) and orbits near the geostationary- Earth orbit (at 35786 km height) are especially endangered, because most…
Extrasolar debris disks are detected by observing dust, which is thought to be released during planetesimal collisions. This implies that planetesimals are dynamically excited ("stirred"), such that collisions are sufficiently common and…
It is observed that hypervelocity space dust, which is continuously bombarding the Earth, creates immense momentum flows in the atmosphere. Some of this fast space dust inevitably will interact with the atmospheric system, transferring…
Over the several decades, the space debris at LEO has grown rapidly which had caused a serious threat to the operating satellite in an orbit. To avoid the risk of collision and protect the LEO environment, the space robotics ADR concept has…
Small (sub)-micron dust is present over the entire lifetime of protoplanetary disks. As aggregation readily depletes small particles, one explanation might be that dust is continuously generated by larger bodies in the midplane and…
Challenging space mission scenarios include those in low altitude orbits, where the atmosphere creates significant drag to the S/C and forces their orbit to an early decay. For drag compensation, propulsion systems are needed, requiring…
The exponential rise in small-satellites and CubeSats in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) poses important challenges for future space traffic management. At altitudes of 600 km and lower, aerodynamic drag accelerates de-orbiting of satellites.…
Orbital debris in low Earth orbit (LEO) are now sufficiently dense that the use of LEO space is threatened by runaway collisional cascading. A problem predicted more than thirty years ago, the threat from debris larger than about 1 cm…
The future of space exploration missions will rely on technologies increasing their endurance and self-sufficiency, including for manufacturing objects on-demand. We propose a process for handling and additively manufacturing powders that…
We propose two algorithms to provide a full preliminary orbit of an Earth-orbiting object with a number of observations lower than the classical methods, such as those by Laplace and Gauss. The first one is the Virtual debris algorithm,…
Debris disks or exo-Kuiper belts, detected through their thermal or scattered emission from their dusty components, are ubiquitous around main-sequence stars. Since dust grains are short-lived, their sustained presence is thought to require…
With the boost in the number of spacecraft launches in the current decades, the space debris problem is daily becoming significantly crucial. For sustainable space utilization, the continuous removal of space debris is the most severe…
As orbital debris continues to become a higher priority for the space industry, there is a need to explore how partnerships between the public and private space sector may aid in addressing this issue. This research develops a space…
A propulsion concept in which a spacecraft interacts with high-velocity pellets and the interstellar medium is proposed. The pellets are slower than the spacecraft and are accelerated backwards as they are overtaken, imparting a forward…
Electromagnetic propulsion technology has been thought to provide a potential form of future spacecraft propulsion for some time. In contrast to ion thrusters, which utilize the Coulomb force to accelerate positively charged species,…
The origin of fuel cell technology has a notable connection to the history of spaceflight, having been used in remarkable programs such as Gemini, Apollo and the Space Shuttle. With the constant growth of the electric propulsion technology…
Water has been identified as a critical resource both to sustain human-life but also for use in propulsion, attitude-control, power, thermal and radiation pro-tection systems. Water may be obtained off-world through In-Situ Resource…