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Orbit determination of spacecraft in orbit has been mostly dependent on either GNSS satellite signals or ground station telemetry. Both methods present their limitations, however: GNSS signals can only be used effectively in earth orbit,…
In asteroid rendezvous missions, the dynamical environment near the asteroid's surface should be made clear prior to the mission launch. However, most of the asteroids have irregular shapes, which lower the efficiency of calculating their…
In this Note, a new approach to spacecraft positioning based on GGT inversion is presented. The gravity gradient tensor is initially measured in the gradiometer reference frame (GRF) and then transformed to the Earth-Centered Earth-Fixed…
Space mission design places a premium on cost and operational efficiency. The search for new science and life beyond Earth calls for spacecraft that can deliver scientific payloads to geologically rich yet hazardous landing sites. At the…
In 2023, the 12th edition of Global Trajectory Competition was organised around the problem referred to as "Sustainable Asteroid Mining". This paper reports the developments that led to the solution proposed by ESA's Advanced Concepts Team.…
A new approach to combinatorial optimization based on systematic move-class deflation is proposed. The algorithm combines heuristics of genetic algorithms and simulated annealing, and is mainly entropy-driven. It is tested on two problems…
The field equations of a generalized $f(R)$ type gravity model, in which there is an arbitrary coupling between matter and geometry, are obtained. The equations of motion for test particles are derived from a variational principle in the…
This paper proposes a solution for multiple-impulse orbital maneuvers near circular orbits for special cases where orbital observations are not globally available and the spacecraft is being observed through a limited window from a ground…
Gravitational field modelling is an important tool for inferring past and present dynamic processes of the Earth. Functions on the sphere such as the gravitational potential are usually expanded in terms of either spherical harmonics or…
The trajectory of an interplanetary spacecraft can be used to test gravitation in the Solar System. Its determination relies on radio tracking and is limited by the uncertainty on the spacecraft non-gravitational acceleration. The addition…
Motion planning for multi-jointed robots is challenging. Due to the inherent complexity of the problem, most existing works decompose motion planning as easier subproblems. However, because of the inconsistent performance metrics, only…
Finding optimal trajectories for multiple traffic demands in a congested network is a challenging task. Optimal transport theory is a principled approach that has been used successfully to study various transportation problems. Its usage is…
Orbit-determination programs find the orbit solution that best fits a set of observations by minimizing the RMS of the residuals of the fit. For near-Earth asteroids, the uncertainty of the orbit solution may be compatible with trajectories…
This paper considers the coupled orbit and attitude dynamics of a dumbbell spacecraft around an asteroid. Geometric methods are used to derive the coupled equations of motion, defined on the configuration space of the special Euclidean…
We consider a nearly free falling Earth satellite where atomic wave interferometers are tied to a telescope pointing towards a faraway star. They measure the acceleration and the rotation relatively to the local inertial frame. We calculate…
This paper presents a novel approach for the preliminary design of Low-Thrust, many-revolution transfers. The main feature of the novel approach is a considerable reduction in the control parameters and a consequent gain in computational…
This paper investigates payload grasping from a moving platform using a hook-equipped aerial manipulator. First, a computationally efficient trajectory optimization based on complementarity constraints is proposed to determine the optimal…
I pose the question of maximal Newtonian surface gravity on a homogeneous body of a given mass and volume but with variable shape. In other words, given an amount of malleable material of uniform density, how should one shape it in order…
Recent experiments on ultra slow light in strongly dispersive media by several research groups reporting slowing down of the optical pulses down to speeds of a few metres per second encourage us to examine the intriguing possibility of…
The problem under consideration is to drive a spatial vehicle to a target at a given final time while minimizing fuel consumption. This is a classical optimal control problem in a deterministic setting. However temporary stochastic failures…