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As a copious source of gamma-rays, a nearby Galactic Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) can be a threat to life. Using recent determinations of the rate of GRBs, their luminosity function and properties of their host galaxies, we estimate the…
With the rising popularity of UAVs in the civilian world, we are currently witnessing and paradim shift in terms of operational safety of flying vehicles. Safe and ubiquitous human-system interaction shall remain the core requirement but…
Balancing safety and efficiency when planning in crowded scenarios with uncertain dynamics is challenging where it is imperative to accomplish the robot's mission without incurring any safety violations. Typically, chance constraints are…
A ballistic reconstruction of a meteoroid orbit can be made if enough information is available about its trajectory inside the atmosphere. A few methods have been devised in the past and used in several cases to trace back the origin of…
Giant impacts by comets and asteroids have probably had an important influence on terrestrial biological evolution. We know of around 180 high velocity impact craters on the Earth with ages up to 2400Myr and diameters up to 300km. Some…
When launching or landing a spacecraft on the regolith of a terrestrial surface, special attention needs to be paid to the rocket exhaust cratering effects. If the effects are not controlled, the rocket cratering could damage the spacecraft…
Human activity continues to have an enormous negative impact on the ability of the planet to sustain human and other forms of life. Six out of the nine planetary boundaries have been crossed, a seventh is close to threshold. Prominent…
In Epoch 2 of the 2024 PDC25 Hypothetical Asteroid Impact Scenario, an asteroid is confirmed to be on a collision course with the Earth, and its size and surface composition have been well characterized via a flyby mission. A kinetic…
Many observed giant planets lie on eccentric orbits. Such orbits could be the result of strong scatterings with other giant planets. The same dynamical instability that produces these scatterings may also cause habitable planets in interior…
The leading-trailing asymmetry in lunar crater distribution provides a critical record of inner solar system dynamics, yet the long-standing discrepancy between the observed higher asymmetry and lower theoretical predictions indicates a gap…
On 2032 December 22 the 60 m diameter asteroid 2024 YR4 has a 4% chance of impacting the Moon. Such an impact would release 6.5 MT TNT equivalent energy and produce a ~1 km diameter crater. We estimate that up to 10^8 kg of lunar material…
Spacecraft collision avoidance procedures have become an essential part of satellite operations. Complex and constantly updated estimates of the collision risk between orbiting objects inform the various operators who can then plan risk…
The transfer of material between planetary bodies due to impact events is important for understanding planetary evolution, meteoroid impact fluxes, the formation of near-Earth objects (NEOs), and even the provenance of volatile and organic…
The impact risk has been sharply curtailed for the largest km-sized Near Earth Objects (NEOs) through a concerted period of observation spanning the last decade. Thus the risk of impact has now migrated to the smaller and more numerous…
Temporarily Captured Orbiters (TCOs) are Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) which make a few orbits of Earth before returning to heliocentric orbits. Only one TCO has been observed to date, 2006 RH120, captured by Earth for one year before escaping.…
Numerous Earth-destroying doomsday scenarios have recently been analyzed, including breakdown of a metastable vacuum state and planetary destruction triggered by a "strangelet'' or microscopic black hole. We point out that many previous…
According to numerous press reports, in 2007 at Minot US Air Force Base six AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles mistakenly armed with W80-1 thermonuclear warheads were loaded on a B-52H heavy bomber in place of six unarmed AGM-129 missiles…
Every year, a few metre-sized meteoroids impact the atmosphere of the Earth. Most (if not all) of them are undetectable before the impact. Therefore, predicting where and how they will fall seems to be an impossible task. In this letter we…
Soft landing on small celestial bodies (SCBs) poses unique challenges, as gravitational models poorly characterize the higher-order gravitational effects of SCBs. Existing control approaches lack guarantees for safety under gravitational…
An asteroid impact is a low probability event with potentially devastating consequences. The Asteroid Risk Mitigation Optimization and Research (ARMOR) software tool calculates whether a colliding asteroid experiences an airburst or surface…