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The NEAT (Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope) mission is a proposition submitted to ESA for its 2010 call for M-size mission. The main scientific goal is to detect and characterize planetary systems in an exhaustive way down to 1 Earth mass…
The robustness of a deep classifier can be characterized by its margins: the decision boundary's distances to natural data points. However, it is unclear whether existing robust training methods effectively increase the margin for each…
Near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) that may evolve into impactors deserve detailed threat assessment studies. Early physical characterization of a would-be impactor may help in optimizing impact mitigation plans. We first detected NEA…
Space debris have been becoming exceedingly dangerous over the years as the number of objects in orbit continues to rise. Active debris removal (ADR) missions have garnered significant attention as an effective way to mitigate this…
Analytical approximations are commonly employed in the initial trajectory design phase of a mission to rapidly explore a broad design space. In the context of an asteroid deflection mission, accurately predicting deflection is crucial to…
Deflecting an asteroid from an Earth impact trajectory requires only small velocity changes, typically of the order of microns per second, if done many years ahead of time. For this, a highly precise method of determining the need,…
A concept for forced reentry of small orbital debris with characteristic dimension ~ 10 cm from the highly populated sun synchronous orbit by injecting micron scale dust grains to artificially enhance drag is discussed. The drag enhancement…
Asteroid restructuring uses robotics, self replication, and mechanical automatons to autonomously restructure an asteroid into a large rotating space station. The restructuring process makes structures from asteroid oxide materials; uses…
This study aims at advancing mathematical and computational techniques for reconstructing the interior structure of a near earth asteroid (NEA) via Computed Radar Tomography (CRT). We introduce a far-field model for full-wave CRT and…
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…
On April 13, 2029, asteroid Apophis will pass within six Earth radii ($\sim$31000 km above surface), in the closest approach of this asteroid in recorded history. This event provides unique scientific opportunities to study the asteroid,…
We develop an original apparatus of the granular impact experiment by which the incident angle of the solid projectile and inclination angle of the target granular layer can be systematically varied. Whereas most of the natural cratering…
The aim is to show that in case of low probability of asteroid collision with Earth, the appropriate selection and weighing of the data are crucial for the impact investigation, and to analyze the impact possibilities using extensive…
Recent direct observations of atypically shaped rubble-pile satellites of sub-km asteroids in form of the spherically oblate Dimorphos and bilobate Selam challenge classical binary asteroid formation theories, which only explain the…
International and U.S. strategies and protocols have identified the need to develop rapid-response spacecraft reconnaissance capabilities as a priority to advance planetary defense readiness. A space-based reconnaissance response is…
By means of a fully connected artificial neural network, we identified asteroids with the potential to impact Earth. The resulting instrument, named the Hazardous Object Identifier (HOI), was trained on the basis of an artificial set of…
Gaia is an astrometric mission that will be launched in spring 2013. There are many scientific outcomes from this mission and as far as our Solar System is concerned, the satellite will be able to map thousands of main belt asteroids (MBAs)…
We present a method for calculating precise distances to asteroids using only two nights of data from a single location --- far too little for an orbit --- by exploiting the angular reflex motion of the asteroids due to Earth's axial…
A large number of systems harboring a debris disk show evidence for a double belt architecture. One hypothesis for explaining the gap between the belts is the presence of one or more planets dynamically carving it. This work aims to…
This paper presents a quantitative study of the evolution of the ejecta cloud released from a hypervelocity impact on a binary asteroid. We performed numerical simulations of the post-impact dynamics of the ejecta cloud in the framework of…