Related papers: Precautionary Planetary Defence
There are at least three compelling reasons for the human race to initiate a major programme to explore and better understand the 'minor planets' of the Solar System: (1) Enhancing scientific knowledge; (2) Mitigating the impact hazard; and…
We recommend that the planetary science and space exploration community engage in a robust reevaluation concerning the ethics of how future crewed and uncrewed missions to the Moon and Mars will interact with those planetary environments.…
Framed in positive terms, this report examines how technical AI research might be steered in a manner that is more attentive to humanity's long-term prospects for survival as a species. In negative terms, we ask what existential risks…
Near Earth Asteroids have a possibility of impacting with the Earth and always have a thread on the Earth. This paper proposes a way of changing the trajectory of the asteroid to avoid the impaction. Solar sail evolving in a H-reversal…
Astrophysics and planetary science are in crisis. The large missions we need for the next generation of observations cost too much to let us do more than one at a time. This spreads the science out onto a generational timescale, inhibiting…
Making decisions about the structure of a future military fleet is a challenging task. Several issues need to be considered such as the existence of multiple competing objectives and the complexity of the operating environment. A particular…
When an asteroid has a few observations over a short time span the information contained in the observational arc could be so little that a full orbit determination may be not possible. One of the methods developed in recent years to…
An analytical formulation for collision avoidance maneuvers involving a spacecraft and a space debris is presented, including solutions for the maximum deviation and minimum collision probability cases. Gauss' planetary equations and…
Apophis' current trajectory takes it safely past our planet at a distance of several Earth radii on 2029 April 13. Here the possibility is considered that Apophis could collide with a small asteroid, like the ones that frequently and…
We describe systematic ranging, an orbit determination technique especially suitable to assess the near-term Earth impact hazard posed by newly discovered asteroids. For these late warning cases, the time interval covered by the…
Hazardous asteroid has been one of the concerns for humankind as fallen asteroid on earth could cost a huge impact on the society.Monitoring these objects could help predict future impact events, but such efforts are hindered by the large…
Directed energy for planetary defense is now a viable option and is superior in many ways to other proposed technologies, being able to defend the Earth against all known threats. This paper presents basic ideas behind a directed energy…
We provide a fast method for computing constraints on impactor pre-impact orbits, applying this to the late giant impacts in the Solar System. These constraints can be used to make quick, broad comparisons of different collision scenarios,…
We define a set of procedures to numerically study the fate of ejecta produced by the impact of an artificial projectile with the aim of deflecting an asteroid. Here we develop a simplified, idealized model of impact conditions that can be…
A 'planetary park' system has been suggested as a way for Mars to 'preserve' land for a multitude of purposes. These parks would represent a diverse portion of martian terrain and would be regulated to minimize human contamination and…
Spurred by the discovery of numerous exoplanets in multiple systems, binaries have become in recent years one of the main topics in planet formation research. Numerous studies have investigated to what extent the presence of a stellar…
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…
Today there are numerous studies on asteroid mining. They elaborate on selecting the right objects, prospecting missions, potential asteroid redirection, and the mining process itself. For economic reasons, most studies focus on mining…
As a direct result of ongoing efforts to detect more exoplanetary systems, an ever-increasing number of multiple-planet systems are being announced. But how many of these systems are truly what they seem? In many cases, such systems are…
As discoveries of multiple planets in the habitable zone of their parent star mount, developing analytical techniques to quantify extrasolar intra-system panspermia will become increasingly important. Here, we provide user-friendly…