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Autonomous exploration of subterranean environments constitutes a major frontier for robotic systems as underground settings present key challenges that can render robot autonomy hard to achieve. This has motivated the DARPA Subterranean…
With the advanced capabilities of ground- and space-based telescopes, exoplanet science is beginning to characterize the physics and chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres. However, interpreting exoplanet observations requires sophisticated…
In the expeditionary sciences, spatiotemporally varying environments -- hydrothermal plumes, algal blooms, lava flows, or animal migrations -- are ubiquitous. Mobile robots are uniquely well-suited to study these dynamic, mesoscale natural…
The entry phase constitutes a design driver for aerospace systems that include such a critical step. This phase is characterized by hypersonic flows encompassing multiscale phenomena that require advanced modeling capabilities. However,…
The space challenges do exist at every stride on a human expedition to Mars that arise due to galactic natural phenomena and artificial technologies. This paper emphasizes on Mars orbital and planetary challenges encountered from orbit to…
Astronomical surveys have identified numerous exoplanets with bulk compositions that are unlike the planets of the Solar System, including rocky super-Earths and gas-enveloped sub-Neptunes. Observing the atmospheres of these objects…
Mars exploration motivates the search for extraterrestrial life, the development of space technologies, and the design of human missions and habitations. Here we seek new insights and pose unresolved questions relating to the natural…
The composition of an atmosphere has integrated the geological history of the entire planetary body. However, the long-term evolutions of the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets are not well documented. For Earth, there were until…
Onboard autonomy technologies such as planning and scheduling, identification of scientific targets, and content-based data summarization, will lead to exciting new space science missions. However, the challenge of operating missions with…
Mounting evidence of chemical disequilibria in the Venusian atmosphere has heightened interest in the search for life within the planet's cloud decks. Balloon systems are currently considered to be the superior class of aerial platform for…
This work presents a deep-learning approach to estimate atmospheric density profiles for use in planetary entry guidance problems. A long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network is trained to learn the mapping between measurements available…
A comprehensive exploration of Uranus and Neptune is essential to understand the formation and evolution of the giant planets, in particular, solar system, in general, and, by extension, a vast population of exoplanets. Though core…
The 'Ocean Worlds' of our Solar System are covered with ice, hence the water is not directly accessible. Using melting probe technology is one of the promising technological approaches to reach those scientifically interesting water…
The characterization of extrasolar earth-like atmospheres for biosignatures remains one of the most compelling and elusive challenges in astronomy. Coronagraphy, nulling interferometry and free-flying occulters have been advanced as…
Uranus and Neptune are still poorly understood. Their gravitational fields, rotation periods, atmosphere dynamics, and internal structures are not well determined. In this paper we present empirical structure models of Uranus and Neptune…
Advances in GNC, particularly from miniaturized control electronics, reaction-wheels and attitude determination sensors make it possible to design surface probes and small robots to perform surface exploration and science on low-gravity…
Application of traditional indirect optimization methods to optimal control problems (OCPs) with control and state path constraints is not a straightforward task. However, recent advances in regularization techniques and numerical…
Technosignatures refer to observational manifestations of technology that could be detected through astronomical means. Most previous searches for technosignatures have focused on searches for radio signals, but many current and future…
Induced magnetospheres form around planetary bodies with atmospheres through the interaction of the solar wind with their ionosphere. Induced magnetospheres are highly dependent on the solar wind conditions and have only been studied with…
The Ice Giants represent a unique and relatively poorly characterized class of planets that have been largely unexplored since the brief Voyager 2 flyby in the late 1980's. Uranus is particularly enigmatic, due to its extreme axial tilt,…