Related papers: The Feasibility of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids…
Soft landing on small celestial bodies (SCBs) poses unique challenges, as gravitational models poorly characterize the higher-order gravitational effects of SCBs. Existing control approaches lack guarantees for safety under gravitational…
The rapid expansion of mega-constellations in low Earth orbits has posed significant challenges to space traffic management, necessitating periodic inspections of satellites to ensure the sustainability of the space environment when…
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 method of weighted least squares is widely used in parameter estimation problems such as asteroid orbit determination. A key difficulty is the treatment of observational uncertainties, especially when combining heterogeneous datasets…
In this article, theory-based analytical methodologies of astrophysics employed in the modern era are suitably operated alongside a test research-grade telescope to image and determine the orbit of a near-earth asteroid from original…
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…
Asteroid 2009 FD could impact Earth between 2185 and 2196. The long term propagation to the possible impacts and the intervening planetary encounters make 2009 FD one of the most challenging asteroids in terms of hazard assessment. To…
A method for asteroid deflection that makes use of a spacecraft moving back and forth on a segment of a Keplerian orbit about the asteroid is studied with the aim of optimizing the initial gross mass of the spacecraft. The corresponding…
In this paper we address the problem of computing a preliminary orbit of a celestial body from one topocentric position vector and a very short arc (VSA) of optical observations. Using the conservation laws of the two-body dynamics, we…
When an asteroid has a few observations over a short time span the information contained in the observational arc could be so little that a full orbit determination may be not possible. One of the methods developed in recent years to…
This research paper focuses on the implementation of radial Basis Function (RBF) Support Vector Machines (SVM) for classifying asteroid orbits. Asteroids are important astronomical objects, and their orbits play a crucial role in…
This study evaluates a technique for determining the mass of a potentially hazardous asteroid from a high-speed flyby in the context of a rapid reconnaissance planetary defense scenario. We consider a host spacecraft that dispenses a small…
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;…
This work aims to automate the design of Multiple Gravity-Assist (MGA) transfers between planets using low-thrust propulsion. In particular, during the preliminary design phase of space missions, the combinatorial complexity of MGA…
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…
In recent years, understanding asteroids has shifted from light worlds to geological worlds by exploring modern spacecraft and advanced radar and telescopic surveys. However, flyby in 2029 will be an opportunity to conduct an internal…
While almost all potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) with a size larger than one kilometre have been discovered, it is well-known that the vast majority of the smaller ones are in fact yet to be found. There is therefore an excellent…
The perturbative integral method was applied to quantify the contribution of external forces during a specific interval of time in trajectories of spacecraft around asteroids and under the Luni-solar influence. However, this method has not…
In robotic planetary surface exploration, strategic mobility planning is an important task that involves finding candidate long-distance routes on orbital maps and identifying segments with uncertain traversability. Then, expert human…
In 2023, the 12th edition of Global Trajectory Competition was organised around the problem referred to as "Sustainable Asteroid Mining". This paper reports the developments that led to the solution proposed by ESA's Advanced Concepts Team.…