Related papers: Parameter-space study of kinetic-impactor mission …
This work presents a new parametrisation suitable for parameter-space studies of heliocentric Earth-impacting orbits. Originally motivated by the issue of potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) and the mitigation of such a risk, we show…
Context: Potentially hazardous asteroids (PHA) in Earth-crossing orbits pose a constant threat to life on Earth. Several mitigation methods have been proposed, and the most feasible technique appears to be the disintegration of the impactor…
It is difficult to discover pulsars via their gamma-ray emission because current instruments typically detect fewer than one photon per million rotations. This creates a significant computing challenge for isolated pulsars, where the…
Orbit-determination programs find the orbit solution that best fits a set of observations by minimizing the RMS of the residuals of the fit. For near-Earth asteroids, the uncertainty of the orbit solution may be compatible with trajectories…
When an asteroid has a few observations over a short time span the information contained in the observational arc could be so little that a full orbit determination may be not possible. One of the methods developed in recent years to…
This paper presents the results of a mission concept study for an autonomous micro-scale surface lander also referred to as PANIC - the Pico Autonomous Near-Earth Asteroid In Situ Characterizer. The lander is based on the shape of a regular…
The parameter space of dynamical systems arising in applications is often found to be high-dimensional and difficult to explore. We construct a fast algorithm to numerically analyze "quantitative features" of dynamical systems depending on…
We present a practical and effective method of planetary defense that allows for extremely short mitigation time scales if required as well as long time scale mitigation. This one system allows for virtually any required defense mode. In…
Asteroid impacts pose a major threat to all life on Earth. The age of the dinosaurs was abruptly ended by a 10-km-diameter asteroid. Currently, a nuclear device is the only means of deflecting large Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs)…
Given a primary interest in "mitigation of the potential hazard" of near-Earth objects impacting the Earth, the subject of characterization takes on an aspect not normally present when considering asteroids as abstract bodies. Many…
In this review statistical issues appearing in astrophysical searches for particle dark matter, i.e. indirect detection (dark matter annihilating into standard model particles) or direct detection (dark matter particles scattering in deep…
The Palomar High-precision Astrometric Search for Exoplanet Systems (PHASES) has monitored 37 sub-arcsecond binary systems to determine whether their Keplerian orbits are perturbed by faint astrometric companions to either star. Software…
Various astrophysical processes are known, where the fly-by of a massive object affects matter initially supported against gravity by rotation. Examples are perturbations of galaxies, protoplanetary discs or planetary systems. We…
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are a special subset of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that can come close to the Earth and are large enough to cause significant damage in the event of an impact. Observations and researches of Earth-PHAs…
A concept for an Impact Mitigation Preparation Mission, called Don Quijote, is to send two spacecraft to a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA): an Orbiter and an Impactor. The Impactor collides with the asteroid while the Orbiter measures the…
Extensive simulations of planetary microlensing are necessary both before and after a survey is conducted: before to design and optimize the survey and after to understand its detection efficiency. The major bottleneck in such computations…
This study evaluates a technique for determining the mass of a potentially hazardous asteroid from a high-speed flyby in the context of a rapid reconnaissance planetary defense scenario. We consider a host spacecraft that dispenses a small…
The catalog of km-sized near-Earth objects (NEOs) is nearly complete. Typical impact monitoring analyses search for possible impacts over the next 100 years and none of the km-sized objects represent an impact threat over that time…
Using lunar seismological data, constraints have been proposed on the available parameter space of macroscopic dark matter (macros). We show that actual limits are considerably weaker by considering in greater detail the mechanism through…
A method for determining the orbital parameters of interacting pairs of galaxies is presented and evaluated using artificial data. The method consists of a genetic algorithm which can search efficiently through the very large space of…