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A number of irregular moons of the Jovian planets have recently been discovered. Most adequate way of their origin is capture, but detailed mechanism is unknown. A few possibilities are discussed: collisions, gas drag, tidal destruction of…

Hayabusa2 collected 5.4 g of samples from the asteroid (162173) Ryugu and brought them back to Earth. Obtaining multiband images of these samples with the spectral bands comparable to those used for remote-sensing observations is important…

There are more than 750,000 asteroids identified in the main belt. These asteroids are diverse in composition and size. Some of these asteroids can be traced back to the early solar system and can provide insight into the origins of the…

We present a new space mission concept that is capable of finding, detecting, and tracking 90% of near-Earth objects (NEO) with H magnitude of $\rm H\leq22$ (i.e., $\sim$140 m in size) that are potentially hazardous to the Earth. The new…

The discovery of refractory grains amongst the particles collected from Comet 81P/Wild 2 by the Stardust spacecraft (Brownlee et al. 2006) provides the ground truth for large-scale transport of materials formed in high temperature regions…

There are thousands of asteroids in near-Earth space and millions in the Main Belt. They are diverse in physical properties and composition and are time capsules of the early solar system. This makes them strategic locations for planetary…

Small Solar System bodies are pristine remnants of Solar System formation, which provide valuable insights for planetary science and astronomy. Their discovery and cataloging also have strong practical implications to life on Earth as the…

We have obtained polarimetric measurements of asteroid (101955) Bennu, a presumably primitive near-Earth object (NEO) that is the target of NASA's sample return mission OSIRIS-REx. During our observing campaign, Bennu was visible from Earth…

On 5th December 2020 at 17:28 UTC, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa-2 sample return capsule came back to the Earth. It re-entered the atmosphere over South Australia, visible for 53 seconds as a fireball from near the…

The science and origins of asteroids is deemed high priority in the Planetary Science Decadal Survey. Two of the main questions from the Decadal Survey pertain to what the "initial stages, conditions, and processes of solar system formation…

In recent years, the retrieval of entire asteroids has received significant attention, with many approaches leveraging the invariant manifolds of the Circular-Restricted Three-body Problem to capture an asteroid into a periodic orbit about…

We have investigated the dependence of the prograde/retrograde temporary capture of asteroids by a planet on their original heliocentric semimajor axes through analytical arguments and numerical orbital integrations in order to discuss the…

Multi-epoch Spitzer Space Telescope 24 micron data is utilized from the MIPSGAL and Taurus Legacy surveys to detect asteroids based on their relative motion. These infrared detections are matched to known asteroids and rotationally averaged…

Porosity is a key characteristic of the regolith on the surface of small bodies. The porosity of the regolith on the surface of asteroids is changed by applied pressure, and the relationship between pressure and porosity depends on the…

We present a study of an impacting descent probe that increases the science return of spacecraft orbiting or passing an atmosphere-less planetary body of the solar system, such as the Galilean moons of Jupiter. The descent probe is a…

In April to May 2023, the superBIT telescope was lifted to the Earth's stratosphere by a helium-filled super-pressure balloon, to acquire astronomical imaging from above (99.5% of) the Earth's atmosphere. It was launched from New Zealand…

Hayabusa2, a Japanese sample-return mission to a C-type asteroid, arrived at its target 162173 Ryugu in June 2018. The optical navigation cameras (ONC-T, ONC-W1, ONC-W2) successfully obtained numerous images of Ryugu. ONC-T is a telescopic…

Past planetary missions have been broad and detailed for Gas Giants, compared to flyby missions for Ice Giants. Presently, a mission to Neptune using electrodynamic tethers is under consideration due to the ability of tethers to provide…

Two primitive near Earth asteroids, (101955) Bennu and (162173) Ryugu, will be visited by a spacecraft with the aim of returning samples back to Earth. Since these objects are believed to originate in the inner main belt primitive…

Modern astronomical surveys detect asteroids by linking together their appearances across multiple images taken over time. This approach faces limitations in detecting faint asteroids and handling the computational complexity of trajectory…