Related papers: Asteroid Mining: ACT&Friends' Results for the GTOC…
We present the solution approach developed by the team `TheAntipodes' during the 12th edition of the Global Trajectory Optimization Competition (GTOC 12). An overview of the approach is as follows: (1) generate asteroid subsets, (2) chain…
Designing optimal trajectories for multi-flyby asteroid missions is scientifically critical but technically challenging due to nonlinear dynamics, intermediate constraints, and numerous local optima. This paper establishes a method that…
We consider the interplanetary trajectory design problem posed by the 8th edition of the Global Trajectory Optimization Competition and present the end-to-end strategy developed by the team ACT-ISAS (a collaboration between the European…
Dyson spheres are hypothetical megastructures encircling stars in order to harvest most of their energy output. During the 11th edition of the GTOC challenge, participants were tasked with a complex trajectory planning related to the…
Asteroid mining has been proposed as an approach to complement Earth-based supplies of rare earth metals and supplying resources in space, such as water. However, existing studies on the economic viability of asteroid mining have remained…
Asteroid exploration has been attracting more attention in recent years. Nevertheless, we have just visited tens of asteroids while we have discovered more than one million bodies. As our current observation and knowledge should be biased,…
Low-thrust trajectories play a crucial role in optimizing scientific output and cost efficiency in asteroid belt missions. Unlike high-thrust transfers, low-thrust trajectories require solving complex optimal control problems. This…
The design of interplanetary trajectories often involves a preliminary search for options later refined/assembled into one final trajectory. It is this broad search that, often being intractable, inspires the international event called…
This paper presents the solution approach developed by the team "theAntipodes" for the 11th Global Trajectory Optimization Competition (GTOC11). The approach consists of four main blocks: 1) mothership chain generation, 2) rendezvous table…
Beginning in 2012, NASA utilized a strategic process to identify broad societal questions, or grand challenges, that are well suited to the aerospace sector and align with national priorities. This effort generated NASA's first grand…
Inspired by the recent 11th Global Trajectory Optimisation Competition, this paper presents the asteroid routing problem (ARP) as a realistic benchmark of algorithms for expensive bound-constrained black-box optimization in permutation…
A deep-space exploration mission with low-thrust propulsion to rendezvous with multiple asteroids is investigated. Indirect methods, based on the optimal control theory, are implemented to optimize the fuel consumption. The application of…
The recent growing interest in small solar system bodies such as asteroids and comets for scientific inspection, exploitation of resources, and planetary defense reasons is pushing the development of innovative engineering solutions to…
The increasing number of space missions may overwhelm ground support infrastructure, prompting the need for autonomous deep-space guidance, navigation, and control (GN\&C) systems. These systems offer sustainable and cost-effective…
In this study, an interplanetary space flight mission design is established to obtain the minimum \(\Delta V\) required for a rendezvous and sample return mission from an asteroid. Given the initial (observed) conditions of an asteroid, a…
Given a set of celestial bodies, the problem of finding an optimal sequence of swing-bys, deep space manoeuvres (DSM) and transfer arcs connecting the elements of the set is combinatorial in nature. The number of possible paths grows…
This paper presents the development and evaluation of an optimization-based autonomous trajectory planning algorithm for the asteroid reconnaissance phase of a deep-space exploration mission. The reconnaissance phase is a low-altitude flyby…
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 present a novel method for extracting moving objects from TESS data using machine learning. Our approach uses two stacked 3D U-Nets with skip connections, which we call a W-Net, to filter background and identify pixels containing moving…
The optimal design of multi-target rendezvous and flyby missions is challenging due to the combination of traditional spacecraft trajectory optimization and high-dimensional combinatorial problems. This often requires large-scale global…