Related papers: On Asteroid Retrieval Missions Enabled by Invarian…
The interest in the problem of small asteroids observed shortly before a deep close approach or an impact with the Earth has grown a lot in recent years. Since the observational dataset of such objects is very limited, they deserve…
Low-thrust trajectories play a crucial role in optimizing scientific output and cost efficiency in asteroid belt missions. Unlike high-thrust transfers, low-thrust trajectories require solving complex optimal control problems. This…
A method for the rapid estimation of transfer costs for the removal of debris in low Earth orbit is proposed. Debris objects among a population with similar inclination values are considered. The proposed approximate analysis can provide…
Large or even medium sized asteroids impacting the Earth can cause damage on a global scale. Existing and planned concepts for finding near-Earth objects (NEOs) with diameter of 140 m or larger would take ~15-20 years of observation to find…
We describe the Pan-STARRS Moving Object Processing System (MOPS), a modern software package that produces automatic asteroid discoveries and identifications from catalogs of transient detections from next-generation astronomical survey…
The orbital dynamics of a spacecraft orbiting around irregular small celestial bodies is a challenging problem. Difficulties to model the gravity field of these bodies arise from the poor knowledge of the exact shape as observed from the…
We present a pipeline for searching for trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) using data from the TESS mission, that includes a novel optimization-based framework for subtracting the effects of scattered light and pointing jitter. The background…
Recent observations and detections of interstellar objects (ISOs) passing through the solar system have sparked a wave of interest into these objects. Although rare, these ISOs can be captured into bound orbits around the Sun. In this…
The proposal of increasingly complex and innovative space endeavours poses growing demands for mission designers. In order to meet the established requirements and constraints while maintaining a low fuel cost, the use of low-energy…
Reactive trajectory optimization for robotics presents formidable challenges, demanding the rapid generation of purposeful robot motion in complex and swiftly changing dynamic environments. While much existing research predominantly…
Objects in aerial images usually have arbitrary orientations and are densely located over the ground, making them extremely challenge to be detected. Many recently developed methods attempt to solve these issues by estimating an extra…
We demonstrate the remarkable effectiveness of boundary value formulations coupled to numerical continuation for the computation of stable and unstable manifolds in systems of ordinary differential equations. Specifically, we consider the…
<abridged> NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) has been proposed with the aim to capture a small asteroid a few meters in size and redirect it into an orbit around the Moon. There it can be investigated at leisure by astronauts aboard an…
This article describes a citizen-science project conducted by the Spanish Virtual Observatory (SVO) to improve the orbits of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) using data from astronomical archives. The list of NEAs maintained at the Minor Planet…
The operation of satellites in very low Earth orbit (VLEO) has been linked to a variety of benefits to both the spacecraft platform and mission design. Critically, for Earth observation (EO) missions a reduction in altitude can enable…
Objects gravitationally captured by the Earth-Moon system are commonly called temporarily captured orbiters (TCOs), natural Earth satellites, or minimoons. TCOs are a crucially important subpopulation of near-Earth objects (NEOs) to…
The rotational properties of small near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) provide crucial insights into their internal structure and collisional history. However, systematic surveys targeting metre- to decametre-sized bodies are rare, thus leaving…
The ESO/MPG WFI and the INT WFC wide field archives comprising 330,000 images were mined to search for serendipitous encounters of known Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). A total of 152 asteroids (44…
The Ariel mission, due to launch in 2029, will obtain spectroscopic information for 1000 exoplanets, providing an unprecedented opportunity for comparative exoplanetology. Retrieval codes - parameteric atmospheric models coupled with an…
Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are small Solar System bodies whose orbits bring them close to the Earth's orbit. We are carrying out a Warm Spitzer Cycle 11 Exploration Science program entitled NEOSurvey --- a fast and efficient flux-limited…