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After decades of space travel, low Earth orbit is a junkyard of discarded rocket bodies, dead satellites, and millions of pieces of debris from collisions and explosions. Objects in high enough altitudes do not re-enter and burn up in the…

Space debris, also known as "space junk," presents a significant challenge for all space exploration activities, including those involving human-onboard spacecraft such as SpaceX's Crew Dragon and the International Space Station. The amount…

Several stars show deep transits consistent with discs of roughly 1 Solar radius seen at moderate inclinations, likely surrounding planets on eccentric orbits. We show that this configuration arises naturally as a result of planet-planet…

This paper investigates the mission planning problem for spacecraft confronting orbital debris to achieve autonomous avoidance. Firstly, combined with the avoidance requirements, a closed-loop framework of autonomous avoidance for orbital…

There is ever growing demand for satellite constellations that perform global positioning, remote sensing, earth-imaging and relay communication. In these highly prized orbits, there are many obsolete and abandoned satellites and components…

Avoiding collisions between obstacles and vehicles such as cars, robots or aircraft is essential to the development of automation and autonomy. To simplify the problem, many collision avoidance algorithms and proofs consider vehicles to be…

Conjunction analysis and maneuver planning for spacecraft collision avoidance remains a manual and time-consuming process, typically involving repeated forward simulations of hand-designed maneuvers. With the growing density of satellites…

The development of large constellations of satellites (i.e., so-called megaconstellations or satcons) is poised to increase the number of LEO satellites by more than an order of magnitude in the coming decades. Such a rapid growth of…

Uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) performing tasks such as transportation and aerial photography are vulnerable to intentional projectile attacks from humans. Dodging such a sudden and fast projectile poses a significant challenge for UAVs,…

Over 34,000 objects bigger than 10 cm in length are known to orbit Earth. Among them, only a small percentage are active satellites, while the rest of the population is made of dead satellites, rocket bodies, and debris that pose a…

We investigated the probability that an inelastic collision of planetesimals within the Hill sphere of the Jovian planets could explain the presence and orbits of observed irregular satellites. Capture of satellites via this mechanism is…

Satellite conjunction analysis is the assessment of collision risk during a close encounter between a satellite and another object in orbit. A counterintuitive phenomenon has emerged in the conjunction analysis literature, namely,…

We investigate how the survival of dark matter satellites inside virialized halos depends on tidal stripping and dynamical friction. We use an analytic approach and then compare the results with N-Body simulations. Both the satellites and…

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for different applications has increased many folds in recent years. The UAVs are expected to change the future air operations. However, there are instances where the UAVs can be used for malicious…

Orbital debris in low Earth orbit (LEO) are now sufficiently dense that the use of LEO space is threatened by runaway collisional cascading. A problem predicted more than thirty years ago, the threat from debris larger than about 1 cm…

Operation of radar equipment is one of the key facilities used by navigators to gather situational awareness about their surroundings. With an ever increasing need for always-running logistics and tighter shipping schedules, operators are…

A radar system emits probing signals and records the reflections. Estimating the relative angles, delays, and Doppler shifts from the received signals allows to determine the locations and velocities of objects. However, due to practical…

The density of orbital space debris constitutes an increasing environmental challenge. There are three ways to alleviate the problem: debris mitigation, debris removal and collision avoidance. This paper addresses collision avoidance, by…

Traffic systems are becoming increasingly automated. How will automated objects interact with non-automated objects? How will partially-automated systems handle large disruptions? Low-Earth orbit (LEO) -- filled with thousands of automated…

The rapid launch of hundreds of thousands of satellites into Low Earth Orbit will significantly alter our view of the sky and raise concerns about the sustainability of Earth's orbital space. A new framework for sustainable space…