Related papers: Water Management Considerations for a Self-Sustain…
The intense activity of cratering on the Moon and in the inner regions of the solar system was accomplished during the first 10^9 years [1]. Occasionally, some impact events occur even nowadays. In Section 1, we treat, from a historical…
Several physical mechanisms are involved in excavating granular materials beneath a vertical jet of gas. These occur, for example, beneath the exhaust plume of a rocket landing on the soil of the Moon or Mars. A series of experiments and…
The Mars Life Explorer (MLE) mission concept offers a critical opportunity to investigate whether extant life exists within the mid-latitude ice deposits of Mars. However, MLE's current science traceability matrix emphasizes habitability…
The renewed interest in lunar exploration and the development of future lunar communication and navigation services highlight the need for a precise, stable, and interoperable geodetic and timing infrastructure on the Moon. NovaMoon,…
Space weather observations and modeling at Mars have begun but they must be significantly increased to support the future of Human Exploration on the Red Planet. A comprehensive space weather understanding of a planet without a global…
Each of the giant planets within the Solar System has large moons but none of these moons have their own moons (which we call ${\it submoons}$). By analogy with studies of moons around short-period exoplanets, we investigate the…
Mars provides a critical analog to once habitable exoplanets that have since lost their surface liquid water. The current atmospheric state of Mars retains the chemical fingerprints of that transition, including isotopic signatures of…
The renewed global interest in lunar exploration requires new orbital strategies to ensure flight safety which can benefit extended lunar missions and service a plethora of planned instruments in the lunar orbit and surface. We investigate…
Water treatment facilities are critical infrastructure they must accommodate dynamic demand patterns without system disruption. These patterns can be scheduled, such as daily residential irrigation, or unexpected, such as demand spikes from…
Utilizing solar energy to meet space heating and domestic hot water demand is very efficient (in terms of environmental footprint as well as cost), but in order to ensure that user demand is entirely covered throughout the year needs to be…
We formulated tidal decay lifetimes for hypothetical moons orbiting extrasolar planets with both lunar and stellar tides. Previous work neglected the effect of lunar tides on planet rotation, and are therefore applicable only to systems in…
Large terrestrial planets are expected to have muted topography and deep oceans, implying that most super-Earths should be entirely covered in water, so-called waterworlds. This is important because waterworlds lack a silicate weathering…
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…
This work investigates a hybrid photovoltaic-wind-battery power system designed to sustain a Mars base under varying seasonal and climatic conditions. The Mars Climate Database was utilized to simulate the effects of seasonal changes,…
The Moon is our future. It may seem like a chimera with a projected cost in excess of 100 billion\$, and counting, dispensed on ARTEMIS with little to show to date. However it is the ideal site for the largest telescopes that we can dream…
Two habitable planetary states are proposed: an aqua planet like the Earth and a land planet that has a small amount of water. Land planets keep liquid water under larger solar radiation compared to aqua planets. Water loss may change an…
Remote sensing data from orbiter missions have proposed that ground ice may currently exist on Mars, although the volume is still uncertain. Recent analyses of Martian meteorites have suggested that the water reservoirs have at least three…
We address three major questions in astronomy, namely the detection of biosignatures on habitable exoplanets, the geophysics of exoplanets and cosmology. To achieve this goal, two requirements are needed. First a very large aperture to…
Photosynthesis offers a convenient means of sustaining biospheres. We quantify the constraints for photosynthesis to be functional on the permanent nightside of tidally locked rocky exoplanets via reflected light from their exomoons. We…
Standard definitions of habitability assume that life requires the presence of planetary gravity wells to stabilize liquid water and regulate surface temperature. Here the consequences of relaxing this assumption are evaluated. Temperature,…