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Space interferometry is the inevitable endpoint of high angular resolution astrophysics, and a key technology that can be leveraged to analyse exoplanet formation and atmospheres with exceptional detail. However, the anticipated cost of…
Recent advances in learned control, large-scale simulation, and generative models have accelerated progress toward general-purpose robotic controllers, yet the field still lacks platforms suitable for safe, expressive, long-term deployment…
The 'Ocean Worlds' of our Solar System are covered with ice, hence the water is not directly accessible. Using melting probe technology is one of the promising technological approaches to reach those scientifically interesting water…
There are many benefits for exploring and exploiting underground mines, but there are also significant risks and challenges. One such risk is the potential for accidents caused by the collapse of the pillars, and roofs which can be…
Persephone is a NASA concept mission study that addresses key questions raised by New Horizons' encounters with Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), with arguably the most important being "Does Pluto have a subsurface ocean?". More broadly,…
We address the problem of efficient 3-D exploration in indoor environments for micro aerial vehicles with limited sensing capabilities and payload/power constraints. We develop an indoor exploration framework that uses learning to predict…
Robots are ideal for open-pit mining on the Moon as its a dull, dirty, and dangerous task. The challenge is to scale up productivity with an ever-increasing number of robots. This paper presents a novel method for developing scalable…
Traversing terrains with sparse footholds like legged animals presents a promising yet challenging task for quadruped robots, as it requires precise environmental perception and agile control to secure safe foot placement while maintaining…
Future missions to Mars and Venus will make use of aerobraking and aerocapture in order to gain mass through the saving of fuel at planetary arrival. So far only aerobraking has been demonstrated, if the Mars Premier project has paved the…
Terrestrial planetary systems may exist around nearby stars as the Earth-sized counterparts to the many giant planets already discovered within the solar neighborhood. In this chapter we first discuss the numerous techniques which have been…
We describe a new version (numbered 3.1) of NASA's Meteoroid Engineering Model (MEM) in which we extend the model to handle locations that lie more than a few degrees in latitude off the ecliptic plane. We provide our algorithms for…
The Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-Gateway, or simply Gateway) is a crewed platform that will be assembled and operated in the vicinity of the Moon by NASA and international partner organizations, including ESA, starting from the…
Super-Earths are one of the most common types of extrasolar planets currently known. Hundreds of these planets have been discovered by the $Kepler$ spacecraft and other surveys, with masses up to 10 $M_\oplus$ and consequently higher…
We report results of a recently-completed pre-Formulation Phase study of SPIRIT, a candidate NASA Origins Probe mission. SPIRIT is a spatial and spectral interferometer with an operating wavelength range 25 - 400 microns. SPIRIT will…
In recent years, there has been a significant surge of interest in Mars exploration, driven by the planet's potential for human settlement and its proximity to Earth. In this paper, we explore the performance of the LoRaWAN technology on…
Mars, lacking an intrinsic dynamo, is an ideal laboratory to comparatively study induced magnetospheres, which can be found in other terrestrial bodies as well as comets. Additionally, Mars is of particular interest to further exploration…
The Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE) initiative is developing the science and a technology roadmap for an ambitious space mission featuring a space-based mid-infrared (MIR) nulling interferometer in order to detect the thermal…
We show that a space-based gravitational microlensing survey for terrestrial extra-solar planets is feasible in the near future, and could provide a nearly complete picture of the properties of planetary systems in our Galaxy. We present…
The ancestor philosophers' dream of thousands of new worlds is finally realised: about 3500 extrasolar planets have been discovered in the neighborhood of our Sun. Most of them are very different from those we used to know in our Solar…
Space radiation is a major risk for humans, especially on long-duration missions to outer space, e.g., a manned mission to Mars. Galactic cosmic rays (GCR) contribute a predictable radiation background, the main risk is due to the highly…