Related papers: The NRL Program in X-ray Navigation
Safe flight in dynamic environments requires unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to make effective decisions when navigating cluttered spaces with moving obstacles. Traditional approaches often decompose decision-making into hierarchical…
In this work we propose Neuro-Nav, an open-source library for neurally plausible reinforcement learning (RL). RL is among the most common modeling frameworks for studying decision making, learning, and navigation in biological organisms. In…
The NASA program in X-ray astronomy has two long term goals: 1) to achieve sufficient angular resolution to image the event horizon of a black hole (0.1 micro arc sec) and 2) to achieve sufficient collecting area (50-150 sq m) and angular…
This paper presents Navigation and Rendering Pipeline for Astronautics (NaRPA) - a novel ray-tracing-based computer graphics engine to model and simulate light transport for space-borne imaging. NaRPA incorporates lighting models with…
Recent image-goal navigation (ImageNav) methods learn a perception-action policy by separately capturing semantic features of the goal and egocentric images, then passing them to a policy network. However, challenges remain: (1) Semantic…
Grazing-incidence X-ray optics have revolutionized X-ray astrophysics. The ability to concentrate flux to a tiny detection region provides a dramatic reduction in background and a consequent very large improvement in sensitivity. The X-ray…
Astronomy is by nature a visual science. The high quality imagery produced by the world's observatories can be a key to effectively engaging with the public and helping to inspire the next generation of scientists. Creating compelling…
Vision Based Navigation consists in utilizing cameras as precision sensors for GNC after extracting information from images. To enable the adoption of machine learning for space applications, one of obstacles is the demonstration that…
The follow-up of $\gamma$-ray bursts (GRBs) by the X-ray telescope (XRT, 0.3-10 keV) on board the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory led to the discovery of a shallow decay phase (the so-called plateau) of the X-ray emission in a good fraction…
The recent flight experiments with Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (\textit{NICER}) and \textit{Insight}-Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (\textit{Insight}-HXMT) have demonstrated the feasibility of X-ray pulsar-based navigation…
We discuss the possibility of an autonomous navigation system for spacecraft that is based on pulsar timing data. Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that are observable as variable celestial sources of electromagnetic radiation.…
Recent X-ray surveys have now resolved most of the X-ray background (XRB) into discrete sources. While this represents a break- through in the understanding of the XRB, the astrophysical nature of these sources still remains mysterious. In…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly used in automated inspection, delivery, and navigation tasks that require reliable autonomy. This project develops a reinforcement learning (RL) approach to enable a single UAV to…
Radiation from X-ray pulsars (XRPs) was expected to be strongly linearly polarized owing to a large difference in their ordinary and extraordinary mode opacities. The launch of IXPE allowed us to check this prediction. IXPE observed a dozen…
The discovery of X-ray emission from cosmic sources in the 1960s has opened a new powerful observing window on the Universe. In fact, the exploration of the X-ray sky during the 70s-90s has established X-ray astronomy as a fundamental field…
There is an increasing demand for using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), known as drones, in different applications such as packages delivery, traffic monitoring, search and rescue operations, and military combat engagements. In all of these…
At present, there is a great worldwide interest in the development of technologies that allow information about the X-ray emission from pulsating cosmic sources to be used to obtain navigation solutions for deep-space spacecraft. In this…
A neutron star low-mass X-ray binary is a binary stellar system with a neutron star and a low-mass companion star rotating around each other. In this system the neutron star accretes mass from the companion, and as this matter falls into…
The X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission XMM-Newton is ESA's largest observatory so far; it is dedicated to explore the Universe in the 0.2 - 15 keV X-ray band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Because of its large collecting area very faint sources…
X-ray pulsars shine thanks to the conversion of the gravitational energy of accreted material to X-ray radiation. The accretion rate is modulated by geometrical and hydrodynamical effects in the stellar wind of the pulsar companions and/or…