Related papers: OSIRIS-REx Operational Key Decision Points: A Retr…

The reentry of the OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Capsule (SRC) on September 24, 2023, presented a rare opportunity to study atmospheric entry dynamics through a dense network of ground-based infrasound sensors. As the first interplanetary…

JAXA's Hayabusa2 mission successfully returned samples from the asteroid Ryugu in December 2020. It executed two touchdowns to collect the surface and subsurface materials, one close to the crater created by an artificial impactor. The…

There are thousands of asteroids in near-Earth space and millions in the Main Belt. They are diverse in physical properties and composition and are time capsules of the early solar system. This makes them strategic locations for planetary…

The OSIRIS-REx Thermal Emission Spectrometer (OTES) will provide remote measurements of mineralogy and thermophysical properties of Bennu to map its surface, help select the OSIRIS-REx sampling site, and investigate the Yarkovsky effect.…

This paper presents Rocket Experiment (REX) that was part of a dual payload rocket campaign for NASA's sounding rocket Black Brant IX with water recovery technology. This mission was a suborbital sounding rocket flight that was launched and…

[Abridged] Asteroid mining is not necessarily a distant prospect. Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx have recently rendezvoused with near-Earth asteroids and will return samples to Earth. While there is significant science motivation for these…

Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) are thought to contain a wealth of resources, including water, iron, titanium, nickel, platinum and silicates. Future space missions that can exploit these resources by performing In-Situ Resource Utilization…

The JAXA Hayabusa-2 mission was approved in 2010 and launched on December 3, 2014. The spacecraft will arrive at the near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu in 2018 where it will perform a survey, land and obtain surface material, then depart in…

Using the multi-band imager MapCam onboard the OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft, we identified 77 instances of proposed exogenic materials distributed globally…

XRISM is an X-ray astronomical mission by the JAXA, NASA, ESA and other international participants, that is planned for launch in 2022 (Japanese fiscal year), to quickly restore high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy of astrophysical objects.…

Exploration of asteroid (101955) Bennu by the OSIRIS-REx mission has provided an in-depth look at this rubble-pile near-Earth asteroid. In particular, the measured gravity field and the detailed shape model of Bennu indicate significant…

We have obtained polarimetric measurements of asteroid (101955) Bennu, a presumably primitive near-Earth object (NEO) that is the target of NASA's sample return mission OSIRIS-REx. During our observing campaign, Bennu was visible from Earth…

Missions to rendezvous with or capture an asteroid present significant interest both from a geophysical and safety point of view. They are key to the understanding of our solar system are as well stepping stones for interplanetary human…

We present Keck NIRC2 high angular resolution adaptive optics observations of the microlensing event OGLE-2005-BLG-169, taken 8.21 years after the discovery of this planetary system. For the first time for a microlensing planetary event,…

Orbital debris is a nonlinear control problem in a stratified orbital environment, not a static inventory. This paper develops a reduced-order shell-and-size framework that connects collision-rate scaling, fragment-production gain, natural…

The analysis of biorelevant molecules in returned mission samples such as from the carbonaceous asteroid (162173) Ryugu is key to unravelling the role of extraterrestrial organics in the evolution of life. Coordinated analyses using…

This paper outlines the Radio Science Experiment (RSE) proposed for the RAMSES mission to asteroid (99942) Apophis, which will undergo a close Earth encounter in April 2029. This event provides a unique opportunity to study the asteroid's…

(abridged)Multiple systems for which the astrometric and spectroscopic orbit are known offer the unique possibility of determining the distance to these systems directly without any assumptions. They are therefore ideal objects for a…

The NASA Dawn spacecraft took off from Cape Canaveral in September 2007 atop a Delta II rocket starting an ambitious journey to Vesta and Ceres, the two most massive worlds in the largest reservoir of asteroids in the Solar System, the Main…

The surfaces of airless bodies such as asteroids are exposed to many phenomena that can alter their physical properties. Bennu, the target of the OSIRIS-REx mission, has demonstrated how complex the surface of a small body can be. In 2019…