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Interstellar comets arrive with key ingredients for deep-space platforms already in place: volatile inventories convertible to propellant, natural rotation providing continuous attitude variation, and hyperbolic trajectories that carry them…

We scrutinize the light sail scenario of the first interstellar object (ISO) 1I/2017 U1 (`Oumuamua) by making comparisons between physical models and observational constraints. These analyses can be generalized for future surveys of…

The development of a Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) based solar-shade system, as part of a technically- and financially-viable multipurpose system to provide long-term solutions to global warming and the energy crisis is discussed. The proposed…

We examine the use of the interplanetary substance as a possible fuel for spacecraft plasma thrusters for interplanetary flights. The solar radiation is considered as an energy source for the ionization and the acceleration of particles of…

The rocket technology dates back as far as medieval China. Used initially for entertainment and religious practices over time rockets evolved into weapons and finally into means of transportation. Today, we are nearing the top of the…

Many astronomers have speculated that the solar system contains undiscovered massive planets or a distant stellar companion. The acceleration of the solar system barycenter can constrain the mass and position of the putative companion. In…

The Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, launched in the 1970s, are heading out of the solar system. Using the astrometric and radial velocity data from the second Gaia data release, we integrate the trajectories of 7.4 million…

The outer heliosphere is a dynamic region shaped largely by the interaction between the solar wind and the interstellar medium. While interplanetary magnetic field and plasma observations by the Voyager spacecraft have significantly…

Radiation pressure afforded by natural broadband sunlight upon a transmissive diffractive sail is theoretically and numerically investigated. A grating period of one micrometer is found to convert 83% of the solar black body spectrum into…

This paper reports a design study for a space-based decametric wavelength telescope. While not a new concept, this design study focused on many of the operational aspects that would be required for an actual mission. This design optimized…

We analyse the potential of the electric solar wind sail for solar system space missions. Applications studied include fly-by missions to terrestrial planets (Venus, Mars and Phobos, Mercury) and asteroids, missions based on non-Keplerian…

In around 5 gigayears our Sun will grow to a Red Giant and will swallow Earth. The plan is subdivided into two parts: We propose to construct some kind of parasol to shadow Earth. The position of the parasol will be the (inner) Lagrange…

1I/'Oumuamua (or 1I) and 2I/Borisov (or 2I), the first InterStellar Objects (ISOs) discovered passing through the solar system, have opened up entirely new areas of exobody research. Finding additional ISOs and planning missions to…

We propose to use metasurfaces as a mean of controlling radiation pressure for increasing the range of motions of spacecraft solar sails. Specifically, we present a theoretical study of different electromagnetic field configurations, and…

Solar Orbiter is a joint ESA-NASA mission planed for launch in October 2018. The science payload includes remote-sensing and in-situ instrumentation designed with the primary goal of understanding how the Sun creates and controls the…

Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn, possesses an internal water ocean and jets expelling ocean material into space. Cassini investigations indicated that the subsurface ocean could be a habitable environment having a complex interaction with…

Consuming long-range interplanetary medium with fuel for driving plasma thrust is vital. Methods of capturing the space environment depending on its density and the ship velocity are indispensable issues to extract the space environment as…

The Santa Cruz Extreme AO Lab (SEAL) is a new visible-wavelength testbed designed to advance the state of the art in wavefront control for high contrast imaging on large, segmented, ground-based telescopes. SEAL provides multiple options…

ASTROD I is planned as a single spacecraft mission. It will use interferometric and pulse ranging techniques between the spacecraft and ground stations, to make high precision measurements of the parameters that describe the solar system,…

We suggest the all-sky survey at the International Space Station by four little wide-angle telescopes with polarization filters and CCD-arrays spread by several meters one from another. The video information processing will be carried out…