Related papers: Dynamic Soaring as a Means to Exceed the Solar Win…
Interstellar transport is an object of interest in many sci-fi stories. In history a lot of sci-fi predictions have turned into reality, such as communications satellites, deep-sea submarines and journies to the moon. In this work we study…
When pushing the speed limit for aggressive off-road navigation on uneven terrain, it is inevitable that vehicles may become airborne from time to time. During time-sensitive tasks, being able to fly over challenging terrain can also save…
Context. The atmosphere of exoplanets has been studied extensively in recent years, using numerical models to retrieve chemical composition, dynamical circulation or temperature from data. One of the best observational probes in…
We examine the idea that dynamical parameters can be estimated by identifying locations in the solar neighbourhood where simulated velocity distributions match the observed local distribution. Here, the dynamical influence of both the…
An exospheric kinetic solar wind model is interfaced with an observation-driven single fluid magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model. Initially, a photospheric magnetogram serves as observational input in the fluid approach to extrapolate the…
The driving mechanism of jets and outflows in star formation process is studied using resistive MHD nested grid simulations. We calculated cloud evolution from the molecular cloud core to the stellar core. In the collapsing cloud core, we…
Processes driven by unsteady reconnection can efficiently accelerate particles in many astrophysical plasmas. An example are the reconnection jet fronts in an outflow region. We present evidence of suprathermal ion acceleration between two…
Solar sails can play a critical role in enabling solar and heliophysics missions. Solar sail technology within NASA is currently at 80% of TRL-6, suitable for an in-flight technology demonstration. It is conceivable that an initial…
Lightsail spacecraft, propelled to relativistic velocities via photon pressure using high power density laser radiation, offer a potentially new route to space exploration within and beyond the solar system, extending to interstellar…
Airborne wind energy systems aim to generate renewable energy by means of the aerodynamic lift produced by a wing tethered to the ground and controlled to fly crosswind paths. The problem of maximizing the average power developed by the…
Performing orbital insertion around Mars using aerocapture instead of a propulsive orbit insertion manoeuvre allows to save resources and/or increase the payload mass fraction. Aerocapture has never been employed to date because of the high…
The dynamics of the wind-wind collision in massive stellar binaries is investigated using three-dimensional hydrodynamical models which incorporate gravity, the driving of the winds, the orbital motion of the stars, and radiative cooling of…
Electric sails are propulsion systems that generate momentum via the deflection of stellar wind particles through electric forces. Here, we investigate the relative merits of electric sails and light sails driven by stellar radiation…
Voyager 1 has explored the solar wind-interstellar medium interaction region between the terminal shock and heliopause following the intensity distribution of galactic cosmic ray protons above 200 MeV energy. Before this component reached…
Protostellar jets and winds are probably driven magnetocentrifugally from the surface of accretion disks close to the central stellar objects. The exact launching conditions on the disk, such as the distributions of magnetic flux and mass…
We resolve the paradox that although magnetic collimation of an isotropic solar wind results in an enhancement of its proton flux along the polar directions, several observations indicate a wind proton flux peaked at the equator. To that…
Evidence is beginning to be put forward that demonstrates the role of the chromosphere in supplying energy and mass to the corona. We aim to assess the role of chromospheric jets in active region dynamics. Using a combination of the…
Measurements conducted with the ASPERA-4 instrument and the magnetometer of the Venus Express spacecraft show that the dynamic pressure of planetary O+ ion fluxes measured in the Venus wake can be significantly larger than the local…
Dynamic soaring allows seabirds to harvest mechanical energy from vertical wind shear, but field trajectories lack a benchmark for comparing flight performances across species. We derive a reduced lower bound on transport effort from a…
The Solar sail is a large thin film used to collect solar light pressure for moving of space apparatus. Unfortunately, the solar radiation pressure is very small about 9 mkN/sq.m at Earth's orbit. However, the light force significantly…