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We investigate the performance of a large class of cosmic microwave background experiments with respect to their ability to measure various cosmological parameters. We pay special attention to the measurement of the total cosmological…
Landing robotic spacecrafts and humans on Mars has become one of the inevitable technological necessities for humans. Effectuating perfect Mars expedition requires landing of enormous cargoes, crewed modules, ascent vehicles, and scientific…
Stratospheric High Altitude Balloons (HABs) have great potential as a remote sensing platform for Earth Observations that complements orbiting satellites and low flying drones. At altitudes between 20-35 kms, HABs operate significantly…
This paper focuses on computational prediction of aerodynamic and the flow field characteristics for NASA Common Research Model (CRM) in it's High-Lift (HL) configuration in close proximity to the ground. The URANS simulation with the…
The exploration of the lunar poles and the collection of samples from the martian surface are characterized by shorter time windows demanding increased autonomy and speeds. Autonomous mobile robots must intrinsically cope with a wider range…
Gravity-Assisted maneuvers have been used as a technique to reduce fuel consumption in deep space missions for several decades now. It opened the doors of the exterior solar system. The literature shows those results, as well as new…
The next generation of Mars rotorcrafts requires on-board autonomous hazard avoidance landing. To this end, this work proposes a system that performs continuous multi-resolution height map reconstruction and safe landing spot detection.…
The purpose of this paper is to re-open from a practical perspective the question of the extent in altitude of the Earth's biosphere. We make a number of different suggestions for how searches for biological material could be conducted in…
Context: Low-mass stars and extrasolar planets have ultra-cool atmospheres where a rich chemistry occurs and clouds form. The increasing amount of spectroscopic observations for extrasolar planets requires self-consistent model atmosphere…
Autonomous unpowered flight is a challenge for control and guidance systems: all the energy the aircraft might use during flight has to be harvested directly from the atmosphere. We investigate the design of an algorithm that optimizes the…
More precise lunar and Martian ranging will enable unprecedented tests of Einstein's theory of General Relativity and well as lunar and planetary science. NASA is currently planning several missions to return to the Moon, and it is natural…
Cloud computing offers an opportunity to run compute-resource intensive climate models at scale by parallelising model runs such that datasets useful to the exoplanet community can be produced efficiently. To better understand the…
The availability of Martian atmospheric data provided by several Martian missions broadened the opportunity to investigate and study the conditions of the Martian ionosphere. As such, ionospheric models play a crucial part in improving our…
Space provides unique opportunities to test gravitation. By using an interplanetary spacecraft as a test mass, it is possible to test General Relativity at the Solar System distance scale. This requires to compute accurately the trajectory…
The design of an Airwatch type space mission can greatly benefit from a flexible simulation code for establishing the values of the main parameters of the experiment. We present here a code written for this purpose. The cosmic ray primary…
This paper proposes a systematic method for generating practical and robust low-thrust spacecraft trajectories. One contribution is to consider the change in mass of the spacecraft at two levels: a) the propulsive acceleration and b) the…
It is currently uncertain as to whether methane exists on Mars. Data from the Curiosity Rover suggests a background methane concentration of a few tenths parts per billion whereas data from the Trace Gas Orbiter suggest an upper limit of…
Low-altitude urban flight planning for small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) requires accurate vehicle, environment maps, and risk models to assure flight plans consider the urban landscape as well as airspace constraints. This paper…
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…
Several physical mechanisms are involved in excavating granular materials beneath a vertical jet of gas. These occur, for example, beneath the exhaust plume of a rocket landing on the soil of the Moon or Mars. A series of experiments and…