Related papers: Reduction of Saturn Orbit Insertion Impulse using …

From the numerous detected planets outside the Solar system, no terrestrial planet comparable to our Earth has been discovered so far. The search for an Exo-Earth is certainly a big challenge which may require the detections of planetary…

Recent successful lunar landing missions have generated significant interest among space agencies in establishing a permanent human settlement on the Moon. Building a lunar base requires multiple and frequent landing missions to support…

We find an interesting fact that fictitious retrograde co-orbitals of Saturn, or small bodies inside the retrograde 1:1 resonance with Saturn, are highly unstable in our numerical simulations. It is shown that in the presence of Jupiter,…

Saturn's ionosphere is produced when the otherwise neutral atmosphere is exposed to a flow of energetic charged particles or solar radiation. At low latitudes the latter should result in a weak planet-wide glow in infrared (IR),…

In early Solar System numerical simulations, where chaos is a primary driver, it is difficult to explore parameter space in a systematic way. In such simulations, stable configurations are hard to come by, and often require special…

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…

The excitation of density and bending waves in Saturn's C ring by planetary oscillation modes presents a unique opportunity to learn about gas giant interiors and rotation. However, theoretical complications related to Saturn's rapid and…

This paper aims to provide a new problem formulation of path following for mechanical systems without time parameterization nor guidance laws, namely, we express the control objective as an orbital stabilization problem. It is shown that,…

This paper presents an analysis of optimal impact strategies to deflect potentially dangerous asteroids. To compute the increase in the minimum orbit intersection distance of the asteroid due to an impact with a spacecraft, simple…

Gauging the benefits of hypothetical gravity control propulsion is difficult, but addressable. The major challenge is that such breakthroughs are still only notional concepts rather than being specific methods from which performance can be…

We provide a fast method for computing constraints on impactor pre-impact orbits, applying this to the late giant impacts in the Solar System. These constraints can be used to make quick, broad comparisons of different collision scenarios,…

Here we demonstrate how Saturn could create its rings by itself, with the additional action of its axisymmetric magnetic field once appeared. A new mechanism for the origin of Saturn's rings is proposed for the first time. It includes the…

For many years, it was assumed that Jupiter prevented the Earth from being subject to a punishing impact regime that would greatly hinder the development of life. Here, we present the 4th in a series of studies investigating this…

Aerocapture is an orbit insertion technique which uses atmospheric drag from a single pass to decelerate a spacecraft. Compared to conventional propulsive insertion, aerocapture can impart large velocity changes to the spacecraft with…

This paper addresses the computation of Delta-V-optimal, safe, relative orbit reconfigurations for satellite formations in a centralized fashion. The formations under consideration comprise an uncontrolled chief spacecraft flying with an…

Uranus has a tilted rotation axis, which is supposed to be caused by a giant impact. In general, an impact event also changes the internal compositional distribution and drives mass ejection from the planet, which may provide the origin of…

Large scale manned space flight within the solar system is still confronted with the solution of two problems: 1. A propulsion system to transport large payloads with short transit times between different planetary orbits. 2. A cost…

The gravitational dipole theory of Hadjukovic (2010) is based on the hypothesis that antimatter has a negative gravitational mass and thus falls upwards on Earth. Astrophysically, the model is similar to but more fundamental than Modified…

The problem of minimizing the transfer time between periodic orbits in the Earth-Moon elliptic restricted three-body problem using a multi-mode propulsion system is considered. By employing the true anomaly on the primary orbit as the…

The plasma brake is a thin negatively biased tether which has been proposed as an efficient concept for deorbiting satellites and debris objects from low Earth orbit. We simulate the interaction with the ionospheric plasma ram flow with the…