Related papers: Simulating the Evolution of Lethal Non-Trackable P…
The increasing population of objects in geostationary orbit has raised concerns about the potential risks posed by debris clouds resulting from fragmentation. The short-term evolution and associated hazards of debris generated by collisions…
This paper presents a tool for addressing a key component in many algorithms for planning robot trajectories under uncertainty: evaluation of the safety of a robot whose actions are governed by a closed-loop feedback policy near a nominal…
The widely-separated, near-equal mass binaries hosted by the cold Classical Kuiper Belt are delicately bound and subject to disruption by many perturbing processes. We use analytical arguments and numerical simulations to determine their…
We know little about the outermost exoplanets in planetary systems, because our detection methods are insensitive to moderate-mass planets on wide orbits. However, debris discs can probe the outer-planet population, because dynamical…
The growing density of satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) presents serious challenges to space sustainability, primarily due to the increased risk of in-orbit collisions. Traditional ground-based tracking systems are constrained by latency…
The number of objects in orbit is rapidly increasing, primarily driven by the launch of megaconstellations, an approach to satellite constellation design that involves large numbers of satellites paired with their rapid launch and disposal.…
Low-thrust trajectory design relies heavily on repeated evaluations of fuel consumption and transfer feasibility, which require expensive optimal control solutions. In this work, we show these quantities can be accurately approximated by…
We introduce a new method to perform preliminary orbit determination for space debris on low Earth orbits (LEO). This method works with tracks of radar observations: each track is composed by $n\ge 4$ topocentric position vectors per pass…
On February 6th, 2018 SpaceX launched a Tesla Roadster on a Mars-crossing orbit. We perform N-body simulations to determine the fate of the object over the next 15 Myr. The orbital evolution is initially dominated by close encounters with…
Context. The paths followed by the known extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs) effectively avoid direct gravitational perturbations from the four giant planets, yet their orbital eccentricities are in the range between 0.69-0.97. Solar…
RL is increasingly being used to control robotic systems that interact closely with humans. This interaction raises the problem of safe RL: how to ensure that a RL-controlled robotic system never, for instance, injures a human. This problem…
After two decades of direct dynamical simulation of large-scale structure in the universe, it is safe to say the subject is now mature. Still, there are parts of the problem that are less well developed than others. In general, the…
Exoplanet discoveries have motivated numerous efforts to find unseen populations of exomoons, yet they have been unsuccessful. A plausible explanation is that most discovered planets are located on close-in orbits, which would make their…
Control of systems operating in unexplored environments is challenging due to lack of complete model knowledge. Additionally, under measurement noises, data collected from onboard sensors are of limited accuracy. This paper considers…
We study a trajectory tracking problem for a multi-rotor in the presence of modeling error and external disturbances. The desired trajectory is unknown and generated from a reference system with unknown or partially known dynamics. We…
Debris discs are our best means to probe the outer regions of planetary systems. Many studies assume that planets lie at the inner edges of debris discs, akin to Neptune and the Kuiper Belt, and use the disc morphologies to constrain those…
Exploration of unknown, unstructured environments, such as in search and rescue, cave exploration, and planetary missions,presents significant challenges due to their unpredictable nature. This unpredictability can lead to inefficient path…
The proposal of increasingly complex and innovative space endeavours poses growing demands for mission designers. In order to meet the established requirements and constraints while maintaining a low fuel cost, the use of low-energy…
Catalog maintenance of space objects by limited number of ground-based sensors presents a formidable challenging task to the space community. This article presents a methodology for time-invariant tracking and surveillance of space objects…
The orbital distributions of currently observed extrasolar giant planets allow marginally stable orbits for hypothetical, terrestrial planets. In this paper, we propose that many of these systems may not have additional planets on these…