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Ion acceleration in the MeV range can be routinely achieved with table-top laser technology. One of the current challenges is to improve the energy coupling from the laser to the proton beam without increasing the laser peak power.…
A robust drift-safe rendezvous trajectory optimization tool is developed in this work, with applications to orbital rendezvous and proximity operations. The method is based on direct collocation and utilizes a sequential convex programming…
Numerous high-thrust and low-thrust space propulsion technologies have been developed in the recent years with the goal of expanding space exploration capabilities; however, designing and optimizing a multi-mission campaign with both…
This paper proposes a high-performance and energy-efficient optical near-sensor accelerator for vision applications, called Lightator. Harnessing the promising efficiency offered by photonic devices, Lightator features innovative…
Current practice for asteroid close proximity maneuvers requires extremely accurate characterization of the environmental dynamics and precise spacecraft positioning prior to the maneuver. This creates a delay of several months between the…
Voyager 3 is a concept mission that sends a space telescope to the interstellar medium in a reasonable amount of time. Voyager 3 would take a direct image of an exoplanet using the solar gravitational lensing at the distance of 550…
The NEAT (Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope) mission is a proposition submitted to ESA for its 2010 call for M-size mission. The main scientific goal is to detect and characterize planetary systems in an exhaustive way down to 1 Earth mass…
PicSat is a nanosatellite currently being developed to observe the transit of the giant planet \b{eta} Pictoris, expected some time between July 2017 and June 2018. The mission is based on a Cubesat architecture, with a small but ambitious…
This work is devoted to generating optimal guidance commands in real time for attitude-constrained solar sailcrafts in coplanar circular-to-circular interplanetary transfers. Firstly, a nonlinear optimal control problem is established, and…
The StarLight program conceptualizes fast interstellar travel via small wafer satellites (wafersats) that are propelled by directed energy. This process is wildly different from traditional space travel and trades large and slow spacecraft…
In this paper, we propose novel methods to increase total luminosity and decrease error propagation during subluminal or luminal interstellar transits by navigation with star maps. We demonstrate with theoretical and simulation models in…
The work considers an optical scheme for collimation of high-energy proton beams using $\sim 10^5$~T scale magnetic fields induced in a miniature "snail" target by petawatt or multi-petawatt laser irradiation in ps or fs regime. Such…
This paper presents a comparative study of the applicability and accuracy of optimal control methods and neural network-based estimators in the context of porkchop plots for preliminary asteroid rendezvous mission design. The scenario…
Agile attitude maneuvering maximizes the utility of remote sensing satellite constellations. By taking into account a satellite's physical properties and its actuator specifications, we may leverage the full performance potential of the…
We introduce an emission-biasing scheme in the SKIRT radiative transfer code that enables efficient generation of synthetic galaxy images optimized for low-surface-brightness (LSB) science. Standard Monte Carlo radiative transfer…
Dynamic targeting (DT) is a spacecraft autonomy concept in which sensor data is acquired and rapidly analyzed and used to drive subsequent observation. We describe the low Earth orbit application of this approach in which lookahead imagery…
The author applies, develops and researches mini-sized Micro- AB Thermonuclear Reactors for space propulsion and space power systems. These small engines directly convert the high speed charged particles produced in the thermonuclear…
An outstanding, multi-disciplinary goal of modern science is the study of the diversity of potentially Earth-like planets and the search for life in them. This goal requires a bold new generation of space telescopes, but even the most…
The Solar sail is a large thin film used to collect solar light pressure for moving of space apparatus. Unfortunately, the solar radiation pressure is very small about 9 mkN/sq.m at Earth's orbit. However, the light force significantly…
Object tracking has achieved significant progress over the past few years. However, state-of-the-art trackers become increasingly heavy and expensive, which limits their deployments in resource-constrained applications. In this work, we…