Related papers: Orbit determination methods for interplanetary mis…
The current knowledge of Mercury orbit has mainly been gained by direct radar ranging obtained from the 60s to 1998 and by five Mercury flybys made by Mariner 10 in the 70s, and MESSENGER made in 2008 and 2009. On March 18, 2011, MESSENGER…
Orbital parameters of planets are fitted directly to an appropriate set of observations. It is shown how to use the rigorous Deming method combined with a numerical integration of gravitation equations. In all, 65 parameters of the nine…
This thesis focuses on the detection of extrasolar planets via the transit method, and more specifically addresses issues relevant to the preparation of upcoming space missions such as CoRoT, Kepler, Eddington, aiming to detect terrestrial…
In the future, extraterrestrial expeditions will not only be conducted by rovers but also by flying robots. The technical demonstration drone Ingenuity, that just landed on Mars, will mark the beginning of a new era of exploration…
We demonstrate how measuring orbital period derivatives can lead to more accurate distance estimates and transverse velocities for some nearby binary pulsars. In many cases this method will estimate distances more accurately than is…
We describe a fast, approximate method to characterize the orbits of satellites around a central binary in numerical simulations. A goal is to distinguish the free eccentricity -- random motion of a satellite relative to a dynamically cool…
The angle between the rotation and orbital axes of stars in binary systems -- the obliquity -- is an important indicator of how these systems form and evolve but few such measurements exist. We combine the sample of astrometric orbital…
Recently, the progress in the radar sensing technology consisting in the miniaturization of the packages and increase in measuring precision has drawn the interest of the robotics research community. Indeed, a crucial task enabling autonomy…
In nominal mission scenarios, geostationary satellites perform end-of-life orbit maneuvers to reach suitable disposal orbits, where they do not interfere with operational satellites. This research investigates the long-term orbit evolution…
The possibility of measuring the post-Newtonian gravitoelectric correction to the orbital period of a test particle freely orbiting a spherically symmetric mass in the Solar System is analyzed. It should be possible, in principle, to detect…
The recently discovered first high velocity hyperbolic objects passing through the Solar System, 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, have raised the question about near term missions to Interstellar Objects. In situ spacecraft exploration of these…
Tempo2 is a new software package for the analysis of pulsar pulse times of arrival. In this paper we describe in detail the timing model used by tempo2, and discuss limitations on the attainable precision. In addition to the intrinsic…
This paper presents the design, development, and application of a novel space simulation environment for rapidly prototyping and testing flight software for distributed space systems. The environment combines the flexibility, determinism,…
The orbits of binary stars and planets, particularly eccentricities and inclinations, encode the angular momentum within these systems. Within stellar multiple systems, the magnitude and (mis)alignment of angular momentum vectors among…
The laws of gravitation have been tested for a long time with steadily improving precision, leading at some moment of time to paradigmatic evolutions. Pursuing this continual effort is of great importance for science. In this communication,…
Knowledge of the orbits of visual binary stars has always been one of the fundamentals of astronomy. Based historically on the visual measures, nowadays the orbits rely more (or exclusively) on the accurate speckle data. This prompts…
We describe a new iteration method to estimate asteroid coordinates, which is based on the subpixel Gaussian model of a discrete object image. The method operates by continuous parameters (asteroid coordinates) in a discrete observational…
After providing a brief historical overview on the synergies between artificial intelligence research, in the areas of evolutionary computations and machine learning, and the optimal design of interplanetary trajectories, we propose and…
We have made timing observations of binary pulsar PSR B1534+12 with radio telescopes at Arecibo, Green Bank, and Jodrell Bank. By combining our new observations with data collected up to seven years earlier, we obtain a significantly…
In celestial mechanics, proper orbits related to missions are obtained by solving two-point boundary value problems. Since a selection method of initial value affects the convergence of the solution, developing an effective method to find…