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In October 2017, the first interstellar object within our solar system was discovered. Today designated 1I/'Oumuamua, it shows characteristics that have never before been observed in a celestial body. Due to these characteristics, an…
Goal-oriented conversational systems require making sequential decisions under uncertainty about the user's intent, where the algorithm must balance information acquisition and target commitment over multiple turns. Existing approaches…
During the planet formation process, billions of comets are created and ejected into interstellar space. The detection and characterization of such interstellar comets (also known as extra-solar planetesimals or extra-solar comets) would…
The absolute magnitude and perihelion distributions of long-period comets are derived, using data from the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey. The results are surprising in three ways. Firstly, the flux of comets through…
Many ground-based photometric surveys are now under way, and five of them have been successful at detecting transiting exoplanets. Nevertheless, detecting transiting planets has turned out to be much more challenging than initially…
This paper presents a nonlinear guidance scheme designed to achieve precise interception of stationary targets at a pre-specified impact time. The proposed strategy essentially accounts for the constraints imposed by the interceptor's…
A foundational model has been developed based on trends built from empirical data of space exploration and computing power through the first six plus decades of the Space Age which projects earliest possible launch dates for human-crewed…
Most tracking-by-detection methods employ a local search window around the predicted object location in the current frame assuming the previous location is accurate, the trajectory is smooth, and the computational capacity permits a search…
Intercepting fast moving objects, by its very nature, is challenging because of its tight time constraints. This problem becomes further complicated in the presence of sensor noise because noisy sensors provide, at best, incomplete…
The Parker Solar Probe (PSP) and Solar Orbiter missions are designed to make groundbreaking observations of the Sun and interplanetary space within this decade. We show that a particularly interesting in situ observation of an…
The problem of multimodal intent and trajectory prediction for human-driven vehicles in parking lots is addressed in this paper. Using models designed with CNN and Transformer networks, we extract temporal-spatial and contextual information…
In the framework of relativistic positioning systems in Minkowski space-time, the determination of the inertial coordinates of a user involves the {\em bifurcation problem} (which is the indeterminate location of a pair of different events…
The Lunar Gateway is expected to be positioned on-orbit around the Moon or in a Halo orbit at the L2 Lagrange point. The proposed Lunar Gateway is a game-changer for enabling new, high-priority lunar science utilizing Cu-beSats and presents…
LOFT is one of the four medium mission candidates (M3), selected by ESA in the framework of the Cosmic Vision Programme (2015-2025), for feasibility study. If approved by ESA in 2014, its launch is foreseen in 2022-2024. LOFT is being…
Object-goal navigation in open-vocabulary settings requires agents to locate novel objects in unseen environments, yet existing approaches suffer from opaque decision-making processes and low success rate on locating unseen objects. To…
Spacecraft collision avoidance procedures have become an essential part of satellite operations. Complex and constantly updated estimates of the collision risk between orbiting objects inform the various operators who can then plan risk…
We investigate the improved detection of extrasolar planets around eclipsing binaries using eclipse minima timing, and extrasolar moons around transiting planets using transit timing, offered by the upcoming COROT (ESA, 2005), Kepler (NASA,…
The launch of the Kepler mission on 7th March 2009 opened a new bright future for the search of extra-solar planets while a huge amount of stars will be observed leading to the opportunity to better understand stellar evolution. This will…
Autonomous target tracking with quadrotors has wide applications in many scenarios, such as cinematographic follow-up shooting or suspect chasing. Target motion prediction is necessary when designing the tracking planner. However, the…
Collision avoidance requires tradeoffs in planning time horizons. Depending on the planner, safety cannot always be guaranteed in uncertain environments given map updates. To mitigate situations where the planner leads the vehicle into a…