Related papers: ISRU Implications for Lunar and Martian Plume Effe…
NASA mandate is a human mission to Mars in the 2030s and sustained exploration of Mars requires in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Exploiting the Martian water cycle (alongside perchlorate salts that depress the freezing point of water to…
This article describes the characterization activities of the landing sites currently envisaged for the Lunar Lander mission of the European Space Agency. These sites have been identified in the South Pole Region (-85{\deg} to -90{\deg}…
Mars was characterized by cataclysmic groundwater-sourced surface flooding that formed large outflow channels and that may have altered the climate for extensive periods during the Hesperian era. In particular, it has been speculated that…
There are many indications that anthropogenic global warming poses a serious threat to our civilization and its ecological support systems. Ideally this problem will be overcome by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Various space-based…
As human activities on the Moon expand through initiatives like NASA's Artemis program, the need for sustainable post-mission disposal strategies becomes critical to maintaining the lunar environment. This paper analyzes the logistics and…
Humanity has the knowledge to solve its problems but lacks the moral insight to implement these ideas on a global scale. New moral insight can be obtained through transformative experiences that allow us to examine and refine our underlying…
The collinear Lagrange points of the Sun-Earth system provide an ideal environment for highly sensitive space science missions. Consequently many new missions are planed by ESA and NASA that require satellites close to these points. For…
Seismic anisotropy, arising from the crystallographic or lattice-preferred orientation of anisotropic minerals or the shape-preferred orientation of melts or cracks, can establish a critical link between Mars's past evolution and its…
The Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) period is the narrow time interval between 3.8 and 3.9 Gyr ago, where the bulk of the craters we see on the Moon formed. Even more craters formed on the Earth. During a field expedition to the 3.8 Gyr old…
Kick-starting the space economy requires identification of critical resources that can lower the cost of space transport, sustain logistic bases and communication relay networks between major nodes in the network. One important challenge…
Two years after InSight's arrival at Mars, the ExoMars 2020 mission will land on the opposite side of the red planet. Similarly to InSight, which carries the RISE (Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment) radio-science experiment, the…
Our current knowledge of life on Earth indicates a basic requirement for liquid water. The locations of present liquid water are therefore the logical sites to search for current life on Mars. We develop a picture of where on Mars the…
Although the nucleus of comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) will safely pass Mars in October 2014, the dust in the coma and tail will more closely approach the planet. Using a dynamical model of comet dust, we estimate the impact fluence. Based…
Lifting dust and sand into the thin Martian atmosphere is a challenging problem. Atmospheric pressure excursions within dust devils have been proposed to support lifting. We verify this idea in laboratory experiments. Pressure differences…
This study determined the contribution of Martian topography and the density jump at the Mohorovicic discontinuity (M) to the gravity in a quadratic approximation. It also resolved the problem of determining the possible depths of…
The frequently discovered flooding structure on Mars and other planets has long been an intriguing mystery remained un-disclosed so far. Considering that on Earth, quite a few low melting point liquid metals or their alloy can be candidates…
The Moon is traditionally thought to have coalesced from the debris ejected by a giant impact onto the early Earth. However, such models struggle to explain the similar isotopic compositions of Earth and lunar rocks at the same time as the…
Recent papers by Ansari et al. (2024, Science Advances 10, eadn4650) and Richardson et al. (2025, arXiv eprint 2504.01455) have suggested that global warming of the Martian surface ('terraforming') by 35 K to sustain local habitats above…
The lunar history of water deposition, loss, and transport post-accretion has become an important consideration in relation to the possibility of a human outpost on the Moon. Very recent work has shown that a secondary primordial atmosphere…
The long-term prospect of building a hadron collider around the circumference of a great circle of the Moon is sketched. A Circular Collider on the Moon (CCM) of $\sim$11000 km in circumference could reach a proton-proton center-of-mass…