Related papers: De-orbiting Small Satellites Using Inflatables
Mid-Air Deployment (MAD) of a rotorcraft during Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) on Mars eliminates the need to carry a propulsion or airbag landing system. This reduces the total mass inside the aeroshell by more than 100 kg and simplifies…
Quantum Communications on planetary scale require complementary channels including ground and satellite links. The former have progressed up to commercial stage using fiber-cables, while for satellite links, the absence of terminals in…
Challenging space missions include those at very low altitudes, where the atmosphere is source of aerodynamic drag on the spacecraft. To extend the lifetime of such missions, an efficient propulsion system is required. One solution is…
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 presents a method for guiding a robot manipulator to capture and bring a tumbling satellite to a state of rest. The proposed approach includes developing a coordination control for the combined system of the space robot and the…
Spacecraft detumbling with magnetic torque coils is an inherently underactuated control problem. Contemporary and classical magnetorquer detumbling methods do not adequately consider this underactuation, and suffer from poor performance as…
Cometary impacts pose a long-term hazard to life on Earth. Impact mitigation techniques have been studied extensively, but they tend to focus on asteroid diversion. Typical asteroid interdiction schemes involve spacecraft physically…
Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites play a pivotal role in global connectivity-delivering high-speed Internet, cellular coverage, and massive IoT support. With ever-growing onboard computing and storage resources, LEO satellites herald a new…
This paper presents the design of a small aerial robot for inhabited microgravity environments, such as orbiting space stations (e.g., ISS). In particular, we target a fleet of robots, called Space CoBots, for collaborative tasks with…
Among the mitigation measures introduced to cope with the space debris issue there is the de-orbiting of decommissioned satellites. Guidelines for re-entering objects call for a ground casualty risk no higher than 0.0001. To comply with…
The non transparency and severe propagation effects of the terrestrial ionosphere make it impossible for Earth based instruments to study the universe at low radio frequencies. An exploration of the low frequency radio window with the…
Large satellite constellations in low-Earth orbit seek to be the infrastructure for global broadband Internet and other telecommunication needs. We briefly review the impacts of satellite constellations on astronomy and show that the…
The Magnetic Sail is a space propulsion system that utilizes the interaction between solar wind particles and an artificial dipole magnetic field generated by a spacecraft's coil to produce thrust without the need for additional plasma or…
Detumbling refers to the act of dampening the angular velocity of the satellite. This operation is of paramount importance since it is virtually impossible to nominally perform any other operation without some degree of attitude control.…
Scaling down miniature rotorcraft and flapping-wing flyers to sub-centimeter dimensions is challenging due to complex electronics requirements, manufacturing limitations, and the increase in viscous damping at low Reynolds numbers.…
AcubeSAT is an open-source CubeSat mission aiming to explore the effects of microgravity and radiation on eukaryotic cells using a compact microfluidic LoC platform. It is developed by SpaceDot, a volunteer, interdisciplinary student team…
Placing satellites in geostationary obital (GEO) is propellant exigeant. It requires large propellant consumption that will take a large part of the total mass. Hence the interest is reduce the mass of propellant loaded both in the rocket…
The number of space objects will grow several times in a few years due to the planned launches of constellations of thousands microsatellites. It leads to a significant increase in the threat of satellite collisions. Spacecraft must…
Many small satellites in the Solar System have sub-synchronous orbits, meaning their orbits are decaying due to tidal dissipation. Unless they have substantial material strength, they will eventually tidally disrupt before reaching their…
This paper proposes a solution for multiple-impulse orbital maneuvers near circular orbits for special cases where orbital observations are not globally available and the spacecraft is being observed through a limited window from a ground…