Related papers: A Cubesat Centrifuge for Long Duration Milligravit…
The Large Observatory For X-ray Timing (LOFT), currently in an assessment phase in the framework the ESA M3 Cosmic Vision programme, is an innovative medium-class mission specifically designed to answer fundamental questions about the…
Using a fully autonomous spacecraft - Bering - we propose to detect and study sub-km asteroids from an orbit within the asteroid Main Belt. The main purpose of the proposed Bering mission is to detect a statistically significant sample of…
To gain a better understanding of the surfaces of planets and small bodies in the solar system, the flow behavior of granular material for various gravity levels is of utmost interest. We performed a set of reduced-gravity measurements to…
Surface charging phenomenon of asteroids, mainly resulting from solar wind plasma and solar radiation, has been studied extensively. However, the influence of asteroid's rotation on surface charging has yet to be fully understood. Here…
We present observations carried out using the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias and an interpretative model of the dust environment of activated asteroid 313P/Gibbs. We discuss three different models relating to different values of the dust…
The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) is a near-UV (2550 - 3300 Angstrom) 6U cubesat mission designed to monitor transiting hot Jupiters to quantify their atmospheric mass loss and magnetic fields. CUTE will probe both atomic…
The Asteroid Tugboat (AT) is a fully controlled asteroid deflection concept using a robotic spacecraft powered by a high efficiency, electric propulsion system (ion or plasma) which docks with and attaches to the asteroid, conducts…
A loosely packed bed of sand sits precariously on the fence between mechanically stable and flowing states. This has especially strong implications for animals or vehicles needing to navigate sandy environments, which can sink and become…
The Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer (MinXSS) is a 3 Unit (3U) CubeSat designed for a 3-month mission to study solar soft X-ray spectral irradiance. The first of the two flight models was deployed from the International Space Station in…
We here present results of three-dimensional Smoothed Particle hydro and magnetohydrodynamics simulations of rotating jets, also including the effects of radiative cooling, precession and velocity variability. Using initial conditions and…
In this work, we performed a dynamical analysis of a spacecraft around a nearly equal-mass binary near-Earth asteroid with application to the asteroid 2017 YE5, which is also a possible dormant Jupiter-family comet. Thus, we investigated…
A charged tether or wire experiences Coulomb drag when inserted into flowing plasma. In the solar wind the Coulomb drag can be utilised as efficient propellantless interplanetary propulsion as the electric solar wind sail (electric sail,…
The microhertz frequency band of gravitational waves probes the merger of supermassive black holes as well as many other gravitational wave phenomena. However, space-interferometry methods that use test masses would require further…
Spin off events and impacts can eject boulders from an asteroid surface and rubble pile asteroids can accumulate from debris following a collision between large asteroids. These processes produce a population of gravitational bound objects…
In recent years, nine small near-Earth asteroids were discovered a few hours before the collision with the Earth: these are about one meter in diameter objects that have all disintegrated in the atmosphere, generating bright fireballs…
Owing to the extremely low gravity of small near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), it has been assumed that impact-generated rock fragments escape into space and thus do not contribute to the accumulation of regolith. However, centimeter-sized stones…
The Hayabusa2 mission impact experiment on asteroid Ryugu created an unexpectedly large crater. The associated regime of low-gravity, low-strength cratering remained largely unexplored so far, because these impact conditions cannot be…
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…
Context: Asteroids with a diameter of up to a few dozen meters may spin very fast and complete an entire rotation within a few minutes. These small and fast-rotating bodies are thought to be monolithic objects because the gravitational…
CubeSat satellites are small cube-shaped space platforms that are very popular among academic, research and start-up communities mostly due to their reduced mission costs and short development time. This comes with an easy access to space,…