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Robotics plays a pivotal role in planetary science and exploration, where autonomous and reliable systems are crucial due to the risks and challenges inherent to space environments. The establishment of permanent lunar bases demands robotic…
Planetary exploration increasingly relies on autonomous robotic systems capable of perceiving, interpreting, and reconstructing their surroundings in the absence of global positioning or real-time communication with Earth. Rovers operating…
Stellar activity poses one of the main obstacles for the detection and characterisation of small exoplanets around cool stars, as it can induce radial velocity (RV) signals that can hide or mimic the presence of planetary companions.…
Multimodal locomotion is crucial for an animal's adaptability in unstructured wild environments. Similarly, in the human gastrointestinal tract, characterized by viscoelastic mucus, complex rugae, and narrow sphincters like the cardia,…
Radial velocity surveys for extra-solar planets generally require substantial amounts of large telescope time in order to monitor a sufficient number of stars. Two of the aspects which can limit such surveys are the single-object…
Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology can provide for deformable mirrors (DMs) with excellent performance within a favorable economy of scale. Large MEMS-based astronomical adaptive optics (AO) systems such as the Gemini Planet…
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) can offer a competitive alternative for conventional technology in electrical precision measurements. This article summarises recent work in development of MEMS solutions for electrical metrology.…
A reasonable basis for future astronomical investigations of exoplanets lies in our best knowledge of the planets and satellites in the Solar System. Solar System bodies exhibit a wide variety of surface environments, even including…
We address the problem of angular momentum transport in stellar radiative interiors with a novel semi-analytic spectral technique, using an eigenfunction series expansion, that can be used to derive benchmark solutions in hydromagnetic…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) communications have been postulated as one of the most disruptive technologies for future 5G systems. Among mmWave bands the 60-GHz radio technology is specially suited for ultradense small cells and mobile data…
Many experimental efforts are striving to provide deep maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to shed light on key questions in modern cosmology. The primary science goal for some of these experiments is to further constrain the…
We report on the design and implementation of a rotating sample magnetometer (RSM) operating in the variable temperature insert of a cryostat equipped with a high-field magnet. The limited space and the cryogenic temperatures impose the…
Radial-velocity (RV) signals induce RV variations an order of magnitude larger than the signal created by the orbit of Earth-twins, thus preventing their detection. The goal of this paper is to compare the efficiency of the different…
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…
CMOS Pixel Sensors tend to become relevant for a growing spectrum of charged particle detection instruments. This comes mainly from their high granularity and low material budget. However, several potential applications require a higher…
Mobile robots are increasingly being used to assist with active pursuit and law enforcement. One major limitation for such missions is the resource (battery) allocated to the robot. Factors like nature and agility of evader, terrain over…
The techniques of laser cooling combined with atom interferometry make possible the realization of very sensitive and accurate inertial sensors like gyroscopes or accelerometers. Besides earth-based developments, the use of these techniques…
Solar Ring (SOR) is a proposed space science mission to monitor and study the Sun and inner heliosphere from a full 360{\deg} perspective in the ecliptic plane. It will deploy three 120{\deg}-separated spacecraft on the 1-AU orbit. The…
The ability to confine photons into structures with highly sub-wavelength volumes is extremely interesting for many applications such as sensing, nonlinear optics, and strong light-matter interactions. However, their realization is…
Rydberg-atom sensors convert radiofrequency, microwave and terahertz fields into optical signals with SI-traceable calibration, high sensitivity, and broad tunability. This review assesses their potential for space applications by comparing…