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There are thousands of asteroids in near-Earth space and millions expected in the Main Belt. They are diverse in their physical properties and compositions. They are also time capsules of the early Solar System making them valuable for…
Near-Earth small-body mission targets 162173 Ryugu, 101955 Bennu, and 25143 Itokawa produce gravity fields around 4 orders of magnitude below that of Earth and their irregular shapes, combined with rotational effects produce varying surface…
Exploration of asteroids and small-bodies can provide valuable insight into the origins of the solar system, into the origins of Earth and the origins of the building blocks of life. However, the low-gravity and unknown surface conditions…
High-altitude balloon experiments are becoming very popular among universities and research institutes as they can be used for testing instruments eventually intended for space, and for simple astronomical observations of Solar System…
Porosity is a key characteristic of the regolith on the surface of small bodies. The porosity of the regolith on the surface of asteroids is changed by applied pressure, and the relationship between pressure and porosity depends on the…
Despite their very low surface gravities, the surfaces of asteroids and comets are covered by granular materials - regolith - that can range from a fine dust to a gravel-like structure of varying depths. Understanding the dynamics of…
Exploration of small bodies, namely comets and asteroids remain a challenging endeavor due to their low gravity. The risk is so high that missions such as Hayabusa II and OSIRIS-REx will be performing touch and go missions to obtain…
AcubeSAT is an open-source CubeSat mission aiming to explore the effects of microgravity and radiation on eukaryotic cells using a compact microfluidic LoC platform. It is developed by SpaceDot, a volunteer, interdisciplinary student team…
The dusty regolith covering the surfaces of asteroids and planetary satellites differs in size, shape, and composition from terrestrial soil particles and is subject to very different environmental conditions. Experimental studies of the…
CubeSats have the potential to expand astrophysical discovery space, complementing ground-based electromagnetic and gravitational-wave observatories. The CubeSat design specifications help streamline delivery of instrument payloads to…
The exploration of small body asteroids provides direct access to the primitive building blocks of our solar system. Sample and return missions enable chemical and radioisotope studies which not only provide evidence for the formation of…
With the advent of the nanosat/cubesat revolution, new opportunities have appeared to develop and launch small ($\sim$\ts 1000 cm$^3$), low-cost ($\sim$\ts US\$ 1M) experiments in space in very short timeframes ($\sim$ 2\ts years). In the…
Granular material that is bound by the low gravity of a small asteroid is mobilized by slow velocity impacts. These splashes generated by impacts might play an important role in sculpting the asteroid's surface. In laboratory experiments we…
The Suborbital Particle Aggregation and Collision Experiment (SPACE) is a novel approach to study the collision properties of submillimeter-sized, highly porous dust aggregates. The experiment was designed, built and carried out to increase…
A Drag-Free CubeSat mission has been proposed to demonstrate the feasibility of a Gravitational Reference Sensor (GRS) with an optical readout for a 3 units (3U) spacecraft. A purely drag-free object is defined by the absence of all…
We detail a platform for partial g environment and an experiment for simulated impacts on asteroid surfaces based on it. The partial g environment is created by a two stage approach: First, create microgravity using the ZARM drop tower.…
Space observatories for gravitational radiation such as LISA are equipped with dedicated on-board instrumentation capable of measuring magnetic fields with low-noise conditions at millihertz frequencies. The reason is that the core…
Given the compositional diversity of asteroids, and their distribution in space, it is impossible to consider returning samples from each one to establish their origin. However, the velocity and molecular composition of primary minerals,…
Quantum computing qubits are notoriously fragile, requiring extreme isolation from environmental disturbances. This paper advances the hypothesis that a combination of microgravity and ultra-low temperature (near absolute zero) provides an…
In situ observations of small asteroids show that surfaces covered by boulders and coarse terrain are frequent on such bodies. Regolith grain sizes have distributions on approximately mm and cm scales, and the behavior of such large grains…