Related papers: Target selection for a small low-thrust mission to…
Ariel has been selected as ESA's M4 mission for launch in 2028 and is designed for the characterisation of a large and diverse population of exoplanetary atmospheres to provide insights into planetary formation and evolution within our…
Low Earth orbits (LEO) are known as a region of high space activity and, consequently, space debris highest density. Launcher upper stages and defunct satellites are the largest space debris objects, whose collisions can result in still…
Recent observations of asteroidal surfaces indicate the presence of materials that do not match the bulk lithology of the body. A possible explanation for the presence of these exogenous materials is that they are products of inter-asteroid…
This paper describes design of the trajectory and analysis of the stability of collinear point $L_2$ in the Sun-Earth system. The modified restricted three body problem with additional gravitational potential from the belt is used as the…
Potentially impacting asteroids were analysed for their impact risk on the Earth. To this end, the Asteroid Risk Mitigation Optimization and Research (ARMOR) tool is currently being developed. The tool's modules are described and their…
Exploration of asteroids and comets can give insight into the origins of the solar system and can be instrumental in planetary defence and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Asteroids, due to their low gravity are a challenging target for…
With the growing deployment of small satellites (such as CubeSats, Nanosats, Picosats, and Femtosats) in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for targeted applications like imaging, communication, data storage, and rendezvous-docking mission, there is…
This paper investigates the use of Reinforcement Learning for the robust design of low-thrust interplanetary trajectories in presence of severe disturbances, modeled alternatively as Gaussian additive process noise, observation noise,…
An increasing number of Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) in the range of a few hundred meters to a few kilometres in size have relatively high spin rates, from less than 4 h, down to $\sim$2.2 h, depending on spectral type. For some of these…
Solar-powered electric propulsion systems can operate in multiple modes and their operation is coupled to the power generated by solar arrays. However, the power produced by the solar arrays is a function of the solar array size and…
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…
We present radiometric effective radii and visual geometric albedos for six asteroids in comet-like orbits. Our sample has three of the four known retrograde asteroids (1999 LE31, 2000 DG8, and 2000 HE46) and three objects ((18916) 2000…
We study the interaction of a low-mass planet with a protoplanetary disk with a realistic treatment of the energy balance by doing radiation-hydrodynamical simulations. We look at accretion and migration rates and compare them to isothermal…
We study for the first time the possibility of probing long-range fifth forces utilizing asteroid astrometric data, via the fifth force-induced orbital precession. We examine nine Near-Earth Object (NEO) asteroids whose orbital trajectories…
The abstract is additional with repect to the paper published in JGCD. Ordinary Earth satellites are usually placed into five categories of special orbits: sun-synchronous orbits, orbits at the critical inclination, frozen orbits, repeating…
We aim to provide satellite operators and researchers with an efficient means for evaluating and mitigating collision risk during the design process of mega-constellations. We first establish a baseline for evaluating various techniques for…
We have investigated the dependence of the prograde/retrograde temporary capture of asteroids by a planet on their original heliocentric semimajor axes through analytical arguments and numerical orbital integrations in order to discuss the…
The NEAT (Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope) mission is a proposition submitted to ESA for its 2010 call for M-size mission. The main scientific goal is to detect and characterize planetary systems in an exhaustive way down to 1 Earth mass…
The Solar System contains a population of dust and small particles originating from asteroids, comets, and other bodies. These particles have been studied using a number of techniques ranging from in-situ satellite detectors to analysis of…
The upcoming Comet Interceptor mission involves a parking phase around the Sun-Earth L2 point before transferring to intercept the orbit of a long period comet, interstellar object or a back-up target in the form of a short-period comet.…