Related papers: ISRU Implications for Lunar and Martian Plume Effe…
Multiple impact basins formed on the Moon about 3.8 Gyr ago in what is known as the lunar cataclysm or late heavy bombardment. Many workers currently interpret the lunar cataclysm as an impact spike primarily caused by main-belt asteroids…
Most of Mars' ancient sedimentary rocks by volume are in wind-eroded sedimentary mounds, but the connections between mound form and wind erosion are unclear. We perform mesoscale simulations of different crater and mound morphologies to…
Future missions to Mars and Venus will make use of aerobraking and aerocapture in order to gain mass through the saving of fuel at planetary arrival. So far only aerobraking has been demonstrated, if the Mars Premier project has paved the…
The Moon holds important clues to the early evolution of the Solar System. Some 50 impact basins (crater diameter D>300 km) have been recognized on the lunar surface, implying that the early impact flux was much higher than it is now. The…
Our earlier laboratory measurements showed that low-velocity sand impacts release fine <5 {\mu}m dust from a Martian simulant soil. This dust will become airborne in the Martian atmosphere. Here, we extend this study by measuring…
The electrical environment of a ground vacuum testing chamber creates facility effects for gridded ion thrusters. For example, it is well known that the plume from the thruster generates current paths that are very different from what…
Intense bombardment of solar system planets in the immediate aftermath of protoplanetary disk dissipation has played a key role in their atmospheric evolution. During this epoch, energetic collisions will have removed significant masses of…
The Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) proposes to retrieve a near-Earth asteroid and position it in a lunar distant retrograde orbit (DRO) for later study, crewed exploration, and ultimately resource exploitation. During the Caltech Space…
The SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structures) instrument onboard the InSight mission to Mars is the critical instrument for determining the interior structure of Mars, the current level of tectonic activity and the meteorite flux.…
Models of terrestrial planet formation for our solar system have been successful in producing planets with masses and orbits similar to those of Venus and Earth. However, these models have generally failed to produce Mars-sized objects…
Autonomous precision navigation to land onto the Moon relies on vision sensors. Computer vision algorithms are designed, trained and tested using synthetic simulations. High quality terrain models have been produced by Moon orbiters…
Ahead of the United States' crewed return to the moon in 2024, Intuitive Machines, under a NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract, will land their Nova-C lunar lander in October 2021. At 30 meters altitude during the terminal…
Mars is the next frontier after Moon for space explorers to demonstrate the extent of human expedition and technology beyond low-earth orbit. Government space agencies as well as private space sectors are extensively endeavouring for a…
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…
Diagenetic concretions have been identified at multiple widely separated sites on Mars, including Meridiani Planum (Opportunity), Gale crater (Curiosity), and Jezero crater (Perseverance). Solid concretions at all sites fall within the…
Terraforming Mars can be evaluated with a set of system-level constraints linking (i) target pressures & compositions to required atmospheric inventories, (ii) target surface temperatures to the required radiative control, (iii) inventories…
We use a hierarchy of numerical models (a 3-D Global Climate Model, a 1-D radiative-convective model and a 2-D Mantle Dynamics model) to explore the environmental effects of very large impacts on the atmosphere, surface and interior of…
The leading-trailing asymmetry in lunar crater distribution provides a critical record of inner solar system dynamics, yet the long-standing discrepancy between the observed higher asymmetry and lower theoretical predictions indicates a gap…
Onboard localization capabilities for planetary rovers to date have used relative navigation, by integrating combinations of wheel odometry, visual odometry, and inertial measurements during each drive to track position relative to the…
After the successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory rover, both NASA and ESA initiated a selection process for potential landing sites for the Mars2020 and ExoMars missions, respectively. Two ellipses located in the Mawrth Vallis…