Related papers: Interstellar Object Accessibility and Mission Desi…
ESA has identified interferometry as one of the major goals of the Horizon 2000+ programme. Infrared interferometers are a highly sensitive astronomical instruments that enable us to observe terrestrial planets around nearby stars. In this…
The operation of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) marks a transformative moment in humanity's capacity to detect and characterize interstellar objects (ISOs). With projections indicating an increase…
We discuss the in-flight autonomous assembly as the means to build advanced planetary science payloads to explore the outer regions of the solar system. These payloads are robotically constructed from modular parts delivered by a group of…
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…
Context. Three kilometer-sized interstellar objects (ISOs) have been detected transiting the Solar System, and spacecraft have directly measured micrometer-scale interstellar dust (ISD). Yet no intermediate-size interstellar meteoroids have…
The very inner structure of massive young stellar objects (YSOs) is difficult to trace. With conventional observational methods we identify structures still several hundreds of AU in size. However, the (proto-)stellar growth takes place at…
Missions to near-Earth objects (NEOs) are key destinations in NASA's new "Flexible Path" approach. NEOs are also of interest for science, for the hazards they pose, and for their resources. We emphasize the importance of ultra-low delta-v…
During the formation and evolution of the Solar System, significant numbers of cometary and asteroidal bodies were ejected into interstellar space$^{1,2}$. It can be reasonably expected that the same happened for planetary systems other…
Aims: The interactive software package iCosmo, designed to perform cosmological calculations is described. Methods: iCosmo is a software package to perform interactive cosmological calculations for the low redshift universe. Computing…
We present a detailed spectroscopic study of a sample of bright, mostly cool, stars observed with the Short-Wavelength Spectrometer (SWS) on board the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), which enables the accurate determination of the stellar…
The Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) was an extremely successful european space mission that gave us an unparallel view of the Universe in the infrared, and provided us with hundreds of observations of star forming regions and bipolar…
We characterize mission profiles for human expeditions to near-Earth asteroids, Venus, and Mars. Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are the closest destinations beyond cis-lunar space and present a compelling target with capabilities already under…
Voyager 3 is a concept mission that sends a space telescope to the interstellar medium in a reasonable amount of time. Voyager 3 would take a direct image of an exoplanet using the solar gravitational lensing at the distance of 550…
We study the nonlinear observability of a systems states in view of how well they are observable and what control inputs would improve the convergence of their estimates. We use these insights to develop an observability-aware…
The International X-ray Observatory (IXO) is a joint ESA-JAXA-NASA effort to address fundamental and timely questions in astrophysics: What happens close to a black hole? How did supermassive black holes grow? How does large scale structure…
Control of systems operating in unexplored environments is challenging due to lack of complete model knowledge. Additionally, under measurement noises, data collected from onboard sensors are of limited accuracy. This paper considers…
The detections of 1I/Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov within just two years demonstrate impressively that interstellar objects (ISOs) must be common in the Milky Way. Once released from their parent system, these ISOs travel for Gyr through…
One of the persistent complications in searches for transiting exoplanets is the low percentage of the detected candidates that ultimately prove to be planets, which significantly increases the load on the telescopes used for the follow-up…
The rarity and deeply embedded nature of stars with masses larger than 8 solar masses has limited our understanding of their formation. Previous work has shown that complementing spectral energy distributions with interferometric and…
The analysis of absorption features along the line of sight to distant sources is an invaluable tool for observational cosmology, giving a direct insight into the physical and chemical state of the inter/circumgalactic medium. Such…