Related papers: PyNAPLE: Lunar Surface Impact Crater Detection
Current lunar origin scenarios suggest that Earth's Moon may have resulted from the merger of two (or more) smaller moonlets. Dynamical studies of multiple moons find that these satellite systems are not stable, resulting in moonlet…
Lunar impacts have been continuously registered by lunar seismographs from 1969 to 1978, and recently they have been also monitored by a NASA project after several observational campaigns steered by IOTA. Video and naked eye observations,…
We have conducted numerical simulations to reproduce the observed optical energy profile of the 15 October 2021 (UT) impact flash on Jupiter, which was the largest and the most well-observed flash event detected by ground-based movie…
The Lunar landing has drawn great interest in lunar exploration in recent years, and autonomous lunar landing navigation is fundamental to this task. AI is expected to play a critical role in autonomous and intelligent space missions, yet…
We have performed a simulation of a next generation sky survey's (Pan-STARRS 1) efficiency for detecting Earth-impacting asteroids. The steady-state sky-plane distribution of the impactors long before impact is concentrated towards small…
Impactors of different types and sizes can produce a final crater of the same diameter on a planet under certain conditions. We derive the condition for such "isocrater impacts" from scaling laws, as well as relations that describe how the…
The distribution of heat-producing elements (U, Th, K) within the Moon is critical for understanding its thermal evolution and formation history. Based on a refined lunar interior model, we calculate the geoneutrino fluxes at two…
LunPAN (Lunar Particle Analyzer Network) is a three-year mission proposal designed to comprehensively map the particle spectra in the lunar radiation field. It aims to provide precise measurements of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR), Solar…
Crater cataloging is an important yet time-consuming part of geological mapping. We present an automated Crater Detection Algorithm (CDA) that is competitive with expert-human researchers and hundreds of times faster. The CDA uses multiple…
The small ($\le$ 135 km mean radius) saturnian satellites are closely related to the rings and together they constitute a complex dynamical system where formation and destruction mechanisms compete against each other. We model the cratering…
This paper describes work done in investigating cratering processes by impinging jets. It accompanies a video made for the fluid dynamics video presentations at the Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting, November 22-24, 2009.
We have developed a model to predict the post-collision brightness increase of sub-catastrophic collisions between asteroids and to evaluate the likelihood of a survey detecting these events. It is based on the cratering scaling laws of…
As a droplet impacts on a granular substrate, both the intruder and the target deform, during which the liquid may penetrate into the substrate. {These three aspects together distinguish} it from other impact phenomena in the literature. We…
The orbital displacement of the Moon is known to a precision on the order of centimeters from the lunar laser ranging data, while the lunar profile's confidence level is still only about 200 m. The lunar motion is used to measure the solar…
We investigate the melt production of planetary impacts as a function of planet size ($R/R_\mathrm{Earth}$=0.1-1.5), impactor size ($L$=1-1000 km), and core size ratio ($R_\mathrm{core}/R$=0.2-0.8) using a combination of parameterized…
The NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has returned petabytes of lunar high spatial resolution surface imagery over the past decade, impractical for humans to fully review manually. Here we develop an automated method using a deep…
After the formation of the Moon the terrestrial planets were pummelled by impacts from planetesimals left over from terrestrial planet formation. This work attempts to reproduce the impact rates set by modern crater chronologies using…
This manuscript analyzes lunar lander soil erosion models and trajectory models to calculate how much damage will occur to spacecraft orbiting in the vicinity of the Moon. The soil erosion models have considerable uncertainty due to gaps in…
Ceres, the dwarf planet in the main asteroid belt, hosts heavily cratered surfaces where craters are continuously eroded mainly due to impact bombardment with a limited influence by non-impact processes. Over continuous bombardment, such…
Microlensing experiments today have a tantalizing result; they have detected an excess of microlensing events beyond what is expected from known stellar populations. These events could be due to a possible form of Halo dark matter. However,…