Related papers: Dynamic Soaring as a Means to Exceed the Solar Win…
The Sun is moving through a warm ($\sim$6500 K) and partly ionized local interstellar cloud (LIC) with a velocity of $\sim$26 km/s. Recent measurements of the ionization of the LIC (Wolff et al., 1999) suggest that interstellar helium in…
Studying the ambient solar wind, a continuous pressure-driven plasma flow emanating from our Sun, is an important component of space weather research. The ambient solar wind flows in interplanetary space determine how solar storms evolve…
The problem of simulating the interaction of spacecraft travelling at velocities necessary for starflight with the interplanetary and interstellar medium is considered. Interaction of protons, atoms, and ions at kinetic energies relative to…
Broadly, solar wind source regions can be classified by their magnetic topology as intermittently and continuously open to the heliosphere. Early models of solar wind acceleration do not account for the fastest, non-transient solar wind…
Microwave propelled sails are a new class of spacecraft using photon acceleration. It is the only method of interstellar flight that has no physics issues. Laboratory demonstrations of basic features of beam-driven propulsion, flight,…
The WISPR imager on Parker Solar Probe provides a unique view the young solar wind, flying through solar wind structures at high speed. It is of interest to use WISPR image sequences to measure the velocity of both large features (such as…
The supersonic motion of gravitating objects through a gaseous medium constitutes a classical problem in theoretical astrophysics. Its application covers a broad range of objects and scales from planets up to galaxies. Especially the…
A solar sail propelled small satellite mission concept to intercept and potentially rendezvous with newly discovered transient interstellar objects (ISOs) is described. The mission concept derives from the proposal for a technology…
The albatross optimized flight maneuver -- known as dynamic soaring -- is nothing but a wonder of biology, physics, and engineering. By utilizing dynamic soaring, the bird can travel in the desired flight direction almost for free by…
Dynamic targeting (DT) is a spacecraft autonomy concept in which sensor data is acquired and rapidly analyzed and used to drive subsequent observation. We describe the low Earth orbit application of this approach in which lookahead imagery…
Many ultracompact HII regions exhibit a cometary morphology in radio continuum emission. In such regions, a young massive star is probably ablating, through its ultraviolet radiation, the molecular cloud clump that spawned it. On one side…
The aim of this work is to identify the physical processes that occur in the network and contribute to its dynamics and heating. We model the network as consisting of individual flux tubes with a non-potential field structure that are…
We study the drag force on dust grains moving at relativistic velocities through interstellar gas and explore its application. First, we derive a new analytical formula of the drag force at high energies and find that it is significantly…
Analysis of the Interball-1 spacecraft data (1995-2000) has shown that the solar wind ion flux sometimes increases or decreases abruptly by more than 20% over a time period of several seconds or minutes. Typically, the amplitude of such…
Initial results are presented from 3D MHD modelling of stellar-wind bubbles around O stars moving supersonically through the ISM. We describe algorithm updates that enable high-resolution 3D MHD simulations at reasonable computational cost.…
We discuss a possible mechanism for heating the solar atmosphere by the ensemble of thermal waves, generated by the photospheric dynamo and propagating upwards with increasing magnitudes. These waves are self-sustained and amplified due to…
We propose a model of hard X-ray flares in protostars observed by ASCA satellite. Assuming that the dipole magnetic field of the protostar threads the protostellar disk, we carried out 2.5-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations…
The extent to which a magnetosphere protects its planetary atmosphere from stellar wind ablation depends upon how well it prevents energy and momentum exchange with the atmosphere and how well it traps otherwise escaping plasma. We focus on…
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…
Galactic outflows produced by stellar feedback are known to be multiphase in nature. Both observations and simulations indicate that the material within several kpc of galactic disk mid-planes consists of warm clouds embedded within a hot…