Related papers: Asteroid Mining: ACT&Friends' Results for the GTOC…
This paper solves and analyzes a trajectory optimization problem to deflect Earth-crossing objects (ECOs) employing continuous thrust obtained using a laser ablative system. The optimal control is determined for various initial ECO-Earth…
The preliminary mission design of spacecraft missions to asteroids often involves, in the early phases, the selection of candidate target asteroids. The final result of such an analysis is a list of asteroids, ranked with respect to the…
Sequential Convex Programming (SCP) has recently seen a surge of interest as a tool for trajectory optimization. However, most available methods lack rigorous performance guarantees and they are often tailored to specific optimal control…
Recent studies of optimization methods and GNC of spacecraft near small bodies focusing on descent, landing, rendezvous, etc., with key safety constraints such as line-of-sight conic zones and soft landings have shown promising results;…
Navigating an arbitrary-shaped ground robot safely in cluttered environments remains a challenging problem. The existing trajectory planners that account for the robot's physical geometry severely suffer from the intractable runtime. To…
In this work the orbital dynamics of Earth satellites about the geosynchronous altitude are explored, with primary goal to assess current mitigation guidelines as well as to discuss the future exploitation of the region. A thorough…
The Sparrow Search Algorithm (SSA), characterized by its simple structure and ease of implementation, nevertheless suffers from an insufficient balance between exploration and exploitation, making it prone to premature convergence and slow…
This paper presents an innovative end-to-end workflow for mineral exploration, integrating ambient noise tomography (ANT) and artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the discovery and delineation of mineral resources essential for the…
In this paper the preliminary design of multiple gravity-assist trajectories is formulated as a global optimization problem. An analysis of the structure of the solution space reveals a strong multimodality, which is strictly dependent on…
Satellite mission planning for Earth observation satellites is a combinatorial optimization problem that consists of selecting the optimal subset of imaging requests, subject to constraints, to be fulfilled during an orbit pass of a…
The challenge to fully exploit the potential of existing and upcoming scientific instruments like large single-dish radio telescopes is to process the collected massive data effectively and efficiently. As a "quasi 2D stencil computation"…
We develop the theory of Energy Conserving Descent (ECD) and introduce ECDSep, a gradient-based optimization algorithm able to tackle convex and non-convex optimization problems. The method is based on the novel ECD framework of…
We present a novel empirical method for correcting asteroid phase curves for rotational and geometrical effects using precomputed spin-and-shape models. Our approach normalizes sparse photometric data to a pole-on geometry, enabling…
The last decade has witnessed a rapid growth of the field of exoplanet discovery and characterisation. However, several big challenges remain, many of which could be addressed using machine learning methodology. For instance, the most…
This paper introduces an algorithm to perform optimal reorientation of a spacecraft during a high speed flyby mission that maximizes the time a certain target is kept within the field of view of scientific instruments. The method directly…
The ability to generate artificial human movement patterns while meeting location and time constraints is an important problem in the security community, particularly as it enables the study of the analog problem of detecting such patterns…
Given a set of astrometric observations of the same object, the problem of orbit determination is to compute the orbit and to assess its uncertainty and reliability. For the next generation surveys, with much larger number density of…
This paper presents an optimization-based receding horizon trajectory planning algorithm for dynamical systems operating in unstructured and cluttered environments. The proposed approach is a two-step procedure that uses a motion planning…
We study selfish mining attacks in longest-chain blockchains like Bitcoin, but where the proof of work is replaced with efficient proof systems -- like proofs of stake or proofs of space -- and consider the problem of computing an optimal…
A significant opportunity for synergy between pure research and asteroid resource research exists. We provide an overview of the state of the art in asteroid resource utilization, and highlight where we can accelerate the closing of…