Related papers: Autonomous Restructuring of Asteroids into Rotatin…
We determine the possible detection rate of asteroids with the Bering mission. In particular we examine the outcome of the Bering mission in relation to the populations of Near-Earth Asteroids and main belt asteroids. This is done by…
Planet formation encompasses processes that span a remarkable 40 magnitudes in mass, ranging from collisions between micron-sized grains inherited from the ISM to the accretion of gas by giant planets. The planet formation process takes…
Advances in planetary robotics have led to wheeled robots that have beamed back invaluable science data from the surface of the Moon and Mars. However, these large wheeled robots are unable to access rugged environments such as cliffs,…
In the near future, autonomous space systems will compose many of the deployed spacecraft. Their tasks will involve autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations with large structures, such as inspections, assembly, and maintenance of…
We present the project Asteroids@home that uses distributed computing to solve the time-consuming inverse problem of shape reconstruction of asteroids. The project uses the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)…
The asteroid belt is the leftover of the original planetesimal population in the inner solar system. However, currently the asteroids have orbits with all possible values of eccentricities and inclinations compatible with long-term…
Planets are thought to form via accretion from a remnant disk of gas and solids around a newly formed star. During this process material in the disk either remains bound to the star as part of either a planet, a smaller celestial body, or…
In the last decade, thanks to the development of sophisticated numerical codes, major breakthroughs have been achieved in our understanding of the formation of asteroid families by catastrophic disruption of large parent bodies. In this…
The first asteroid simulants workshop was held in late 2015. These materials are needed for tests of technologies and mission operational concepts, for training astronauts , for medical studies, and a variety of other purposes. The new…
There are thousands of asteroids in near-Earth space and millions in the Main Belt. They are diverse in physical properties and composition and are time capsules of the early solar system. This makes them strategic locations for planetary…
We studied the creep motion of granular materials in a gradient potential field that is created using a slow spin-up experiment device. Natural sand confined in the acrylic box is spun up by a controlled turntable and the surface flows are…
We describe the Pan-STARRS Moving Object Processing System (MOPS), a modern software package that produces automatic asteroid discoveries and identifications from catalogs of transient detections from next-generation astronomical survey…
A method for asteroid deflection that makes use of a spacecraft moving back and forth on a segment of a Keplerian orbit about the asteroid is studied with the aim of optimizing the initial gross mass of the spacecraft. The corresponding…
Understanding the geological modification processes on asteroids can provide information concerning their surface history. Images of small asteroids from spacecraft show a depletion in terms of smaller craters. Seismic shaking was…
In planetary science, accretion is the process in which solids agglomerate to form larger and larger objects and eventually planets are produced. The initial conditions are a disc of gas and microscopic solid particles, with a total mass of…
Our knowledge of the strengths of small bodies in the Solar System is limited by our poor understanding of their internal structures, and this, in turn, clouds our understanding of the formation and evolution of these bodies. Observations…
In addition to stellar data, Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) also contains accurate astrometry and photometry of about 14,000 asteroids covering 22 months of observations. We used Gaia asteroid photometry to reconstruct rotation periods, spin…
CASTAway is a mission concept to explore our Solar System's main asteroid belt. Asteroids and comets provide a window into the formation and evolution of our Solar System and the composition of these objects can be inferred from space-based…
Observed planetary debris in white dwarf atmospheres predominately originate from the destruction of small bodies on highly eccentric ($>0.99$) orbits. Despite their importance, these minor planets have coupled physical and orbital…
Autonomy for robots interacting with sand will enable a wide range of beneficial behaviors, from earth moving for construction and farming vehicles to navigating rough terrain for Mars rovers. The goal of this work is to shape sand into…