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Landing robotic spacecrafts and humans on Mars has become one of the inevitable technological necessities for humans. Effectuating perfect Mars expedition requires landing of enormous cargoes, crewed modules, ascent vehicles, and scientific…

This paper studies a new mobile edge computing (MEC) setup where an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is served by cellular ground base stations (GBSs) for computation offloading. The UAV flies between a give pair of initial and final…

Dragonfly is scheduled to begin exploring Titan by 2034 using a series of multi-kilometer surface flights. This paper outlines the preliminary design of the navigation filter for the Dragonfly Mobility subsystem. The software architecture…

As human activities on the Moon expand through initiatives like NASA's Artemis program, the need for sustainable post-mission disposal strategies becomes critical to maintaining the lunar environment. This paper analyzes the logistics and…

HERMES (High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites) is a space-borne mission based on a constellation of nano-satellites flying in a low-Earth orbit (LEO). The six 3U CubeSat buses host new miniaturized instruments hosting a hybrid…

Communication with a spacecraft is typically performed using Radio Frequency (RF). RF is a well-established and well-regulated technology that enables communication over long distances as proven by the Voyager 1 & II missions. However, RF…

HERMES (High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites) Technological and Scientific pathfinder is a space borne mission based on a LEO constellation of nano-satellites. The 3U CubeSat buses host new miniaturized detectors to probe the…

HERMES (High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites) Pathfinder is a space-borne mission based on a constellation of six nano-satellites flying in a low-Earth orbit (LEO). The 3U CubeSats, to be launched in early 2025, host…

Revived interest in lunar exploration is heralding a new generation of design solutions in support of human operations on the Moon. While space system design has traditionally been guided by prototype deployments in analogue studies, the…

The Geofencing system is the key to operate the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) within the safe and appropriate zone to avoid public concerns and other privacy issues. The system is designed to keep the UAV away from geofenced obstacles using…

Aiming at automatic, convenient and non-instrusive motion capture, this paper presents a new generation markerless motion capture technique, the FlyCap system, to capture surface motions of moving characters using multiple autonomous flying…

Lunar retro-reflector arrays (LRAs) consisting of corner-cube reflectors (CCRs) placed on the nearside of the Moon during the Apollo era have demonstrated their longevity, cost-effectiveness, ease of deployment, and most importantly their…

In order to make a pinpoint landing on the Moon, the spacecraft's navigation system must be accurate. To achieve the desired accuracy, navigational drift caused by the inertial sensors must be corrected. One way to correct this drift is to…

Artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous edge computing in space are emerging areas of interest to augment capabilities of nanosatellites, where modern sensors generate orders of magnitude more data than can typically be transmitted to…

This paper is the second part of a series of studies discussing a novel attitude determination method for nano-satellites. Our approach is based on the utilization of thermal imaging sensors to determine the direction of the Sun and the…

Through multiple, small unmanned probes we can more efficiently capture an asteroid and return it to lunar orbit. The Asteroid Return and Exploration System (ARES) aims to make use of previously tested technology with the application of a…

In the backdrop of escalating ambitions for space exploration, particularly with programs like Artemis aiming for a sustainable human presence on the Moon, the issue of efficient and reliable energy transmission has become a critical…

An air-to-ground free-space optical communication system has been designed and partially developed. The design covers both the communications between the airborne and the ground station, and the acquisition, tracking and pointing. A strong…

In this paper, a control approach called Artificial Neural Tissue (ANT) is applied to multirobot excavation for lunar base preparation tasks including clearing landing pads and burying of habitat modules. We show for the first time, a team…

Human long duration exploration missions (LDEMs) raise a number of technological challenges. This paper addresses the question of the crew autonomy: as the distances increase, the communication delays and constraints tend to prevent the…