Related papers: A Low Cost Mars Aerocapture Technology Demonstrato…
New development approaches, including launch vehicles and advances in sensors, computing, and software, have lowered the cost of entry into space, and have enabled a revolution in low-cost, high-risk Small Satellite (SmallSat) missions. To…
Space exploration has been on the rise since the 1960s. Along with the other planets such as Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter, Mars certainly plays a significant role in the history of space exploration and has the potential to be the…
This paper presents innovative solutions to critical challenges in planetary and deep-space exploration electronics. We synthesize findings across diverse mission profiles, highlighting advances in: (1) MARTIAN positioning systems with…
Space observatories for gravitational radiation such as LISA are equipped with dedicated on-board instrumentation capable of measuring magnetic fields with low-noise conditions at millihertz frequencies. The reason is that the core…
Scaling up robotic imitation learning for real-world applications requires efficient and scalable demonstration collection methods. While teleoperation is effective, it depends on costly and inflexible robot platforms. In-the-wild…
CubeSats have the potential to expand astrophysical discovery space, complementing ground-based electromagnetic and gravitational-wave observatories. The CubeSat design specifications help streamline delivery of instrument payloads to…
Space systems miniaturization has been increasingly popular for the past decades, with over 1600 CubeSats and 300 sub-CubeSat sized spacecraft estimated to have been launched since 1998. This trend towards decreasing size enables the…
Challenging space mission scenarios include those in low altitude orbits, where the atmosphere creates significant drag to the S/C and forces their orbit to an early decay. For drag compensation, propulsion systems are needed, requiring…
We present SpaceHopper, a three-legged, small-scale robot designed for future mobile exploration of asteroids and moons. The robot weighs 5.2kg and has a body size of 245mm while using space-qualifiable components. Furthermore,…
As natural access points to the subsurface, lava tubes and other caves have become premier targets of planetary missions for astrobiological analyses. Few existing robotic paradigms, however, are able to explore such challenging…
Wheeled ground robots are limited from exploring extreme environments such as caves, lava tubes and skylights. Small robots that can utilize unconventional mobility through hopping, flying or rolling can overcome these limitations.…
The problem of minimum-time, low-thrust, Earth-to-Mars interplanetary orbital trajectory optimization is considered. The minimum-time orbital transfer problem is modeled as a four-phase optimal control problem where the four phases…
Mars is the next milestone in human exploration. However, there are still several challenges that must be assessed to ensure appropriate conditions in a future settlement. Communications services will be essential for this task, providing…
Indian Centre for Space Physics has taken a novel strategy to study low energy cosmic rays and astrophysical X-ray sources which involve very light weight payloads up to about five kilograms on board a single or multiple balloons which are…
Icy moons with subsurface oceans of liquid water rank among the most promising astrobiological targets in our Solar System. In this work, we assess the feasibility of deploying laser sail technology in precursor life-detection missions. We…
This paper proposes a systematic method for generating practical and robust low-thrust spacecraft trajectories. One contribution is to consider the change in mass of the spacecraft at two levels: a) the propulsive acceleration and b) the…
The potential of Martian lava tubes for resource extraction and habitat sheltering highlights the need for robots capable to undertake the grueling task of their exploration. Driven by this motivation, in this work we introduce a legged…
The perturbative integral method was applied to quantify the contribution of external forces during a specific interval of time in trajectories of spacecraft around asteroids and under the Luni-solar influence. However, this method has not…
Aerocapture uses atmospheric drag to decelerate spacecraft and achieve orbit insertion. One of the significant risks associated with aerocapture is the uncertainty in the atmospheric density, particularly for outer planets. The paper…
Many science missions require an unobstructed view of space and a stable thermal environment but lack the technical or programmatic resources to reach orbits that satisfy these needs. This paper presents a high Earth orbit in 2:1 resonance…