Related papers: Target selection for Near-Earth Asteroids in-orbit…
We use the planar circular restricted three-body problem in order to numerically investigate the orbital dynamics of orbits of a spacecraft, or a comet, or an asteroid in the Saturn-Titan system in a scattering region around the Titan. The…
We present an updated set of near-Earth asteroids with a Yarkovsky-related semimajor axis drift detected from the orbital fit to the astrometry. We find 87 reliable detections after filtering for the signal-to-noise ratio of the Yarkovsky…
Co-orbital objects, also known as trojans, are frequently found in simulations of planetary system formation. In these configurations, a planet shares its orbit with other massive bodies. It is still unclear why there have not been any…
We present recent improvements in the simulation of regolith sampling processes in microgravity using the numerical particle method smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH). We use an elastic-plastic soil constitutive model for large deformation…
There are thousands of asteroids in near-Earth space and millions expected in the Main Belt. They are diverse in their physical properties and compositions. They are also time capsules of the early Solar System making them valuable for…
A possible mean to stabilize the LEO debris population is to remove each year 5 heavy debris like spent satellites or launchers stages from that space region. This paper investigates the DeltaV requirement for such a Space Debris Collecting…
The heterogeneity of the small body population complicates the prediction of small body properties before the spacecraft's arrival. In the context of autonomous small body exploration, it is crucial to develop algorithms that estimate the…
Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are a transient population of small bodies with orbits near or in the terrestrial planet region. They represent a mid-stage in the dynamical cycle of asteroids and comets, which starts with their removal from the…
Spherical meteoroids orbiting the Sun experience orbital decay due to the Poynting-Robertson effect and can become trapped in commensurability resonances with a planet. Detail conditions for trapping in the planar circular restricted…
Based on telescopic observations of Jupiter-family comets (JFCs), there is predicted to be a paucity of objects at sub-kilometre sizes. However, several bright fireballs and some meteorites have been tenuously linked to the JFC population,…
The orbital distributions of dust particles in interplanetary space are inferred from several meteoroid data sets under the constraints imposed by the orbital evolution of the particles due to the planetary gravity and Poynting-Robertson…
The last phase of the formation of rocky planets is dominated by collisions among Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos. Simulations of this phase need to handle the difficulty of including the post-impact material without saturating the…
We numerically investigate the orbital dynamics of a spacecraft, or a comet, or an asteroid in the Pluto-Charon system in a scattering region around Charon using the planar circular restricted three-body problem. The test particle can move…
This paper develops a robust optimization based method to design orbits on which the sensory perception of the desired physical quantities are maximized. It also demonstrates how to incorporate various constraints imposed by many spacecraft…
Deflection missions to near-Earth asteroids will encounter non-negligible uncertainties in the physical and orbital parameters of the target object. In order to reliably assess future impact threat mitigation operations such uncertainties…
Observational searches for asteroids orbiting near Earth's triangular Lagrange points face unique obstacles. A population of such asteroids would occupy a large projected area on the sky (possibly hundreds of square degrees) and is not…
Owing to the extremely low gravity of small near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), it has been assumed that impact-generated rock fragments escape into space and thus do not contribute to the accumulation of regolith. However, centimeter-sized stones…
This paper addresses the problem of planning successive Space Debris Collecting missions so that they can be achieved at minimal cost by a generic vehicle. The problem mixes combinatorial optimization to select and order the debris among a…
In 2023, the 12th edition of Global Trajectory Competition was organised around the problem referred to as "Sustainable Asteroid Mining". This paper reports the developments that led to the solution proposed by ESA's Advanced Concepts Team.…
Remote measurements and in-situ observations confirm the idea that asteroids up to few hundreds of meters in size might be rubble piles. The dynamics of these objects can be studied using N-body simulations of gravitational aggregation. We…