Related papers: Star-based Navigation in the Outer Solar System
We discuss the in-flight autonomous assembly as the means to build advanced planetary science payloads to explore the outer regions of the solar system. These payloads are robotically constructed from modular parts delivered by a group of…
The outer heliosphere is a dynamic region shaped largely by the interaction between the solar wind and the interstellar medium. While interplanetary magnetic field and plasma observations by the Voyager spacecraft have significantly…
Context. The precise determinations of stellar mass at $\sim$1% provide important constraints on stellar evolution models. Accurate parallax measurements can also serve as independent benchmarks for the next Gaia data release. Aims. We aim…
In March 2009, NASA will launch the Kepler satellite -- a mission designed to discover habitable Earth-like planets around distant Sun-like stars. The method that Kepler will use to detect distant worlds will only reveal the size of the…
Stellar magnetic activity produces time-varying distortions in the photospheric line profiles of solar-type stars. These lead to systematic errors in high-precision radial-velocity measurements, which limit efforts to discover and measure…
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the accuracy of our knowledge of close stellar passage distances in the pre-GAIA era.We used the most precise astrometric and kinematic data available at the moment and prepared a list of 40 stars…
We present the first results of the application of supervised classification methods to the Kepler Q1 long-cadence light curves of a subsample of 2288 stars measured in the asteroseismology program of the mission. The methods, originally…
We present a navigation concept for solving the lost in space and time problem using optical observations of $\delta$ Scuti variable stars. Only a small number of techniques exist that allow a spacecraft to recover from being lost in both…
We present a comparison of four methods of filtering solar-like variability to increase the efficiency of detection of Earth-like planetary transits by means of box-shaped transit finder algorithms. Two of these filtering methods are the…
The Solar System Odyssey mission uses modern-day high-precision experimental techniques to test the laws of fundamental physics which determine dynamics in the solar system. It could lead to major discoveries by using demonstrated…
Multi-epoch radio-interferometric observations of young stellar objects can be used to measure their displacement over the celestial sphere with a level of accuracy that currently cannot be attained at any other wavelength. In particular,…
Scientific research is a continuous process, and the speed of future progress can be estimated by the pace of finding explanations for previous research questions. In this observers based view of stellar pulsation and asteroseismology, we…
Mobile robot navigation in total or partially unknown environments is still an open problem. The path planning algorithms lack completeness and/or performance. Thus, there is the need for complete (i.e., the algorithm determines in finite…
Solar sails enable missions to observe the solar environment from unique vantage points, such as sustained observations away from the Sun-Earth line; sub-L1 station keeping; high inclination solar orbits; Earth polar-sitting and…
In normal observation procedures, the position of the observer is specified by GPS and celestial positions of an object will be calculated. But in some situations, like small zenith angle FOVs, GPS doesn't work. Therefore in this study, the…
A new era of space exploration and exploitation is fast approaching. A multitude of spacecraft will flow in the future decades under the propulsive momentum of the new space economy. Yet, the flourishing proliferation of deep-space assets…
Astrometric surveys such as Gaia and LSST will measure parallaxes for hundreds of millions of stars. Yet they will not measure a single distance. Rather, a distance must be estimated from a parallax. In this didactic article, I show that…
In this paper, we review the various ways in which an infrared stellar interferometer can be used to perform direct detection of extrasolar planetary systems. We first review the techniques based on classical stellar interferometry, where…
We propose AstroSLAM, a standalone vision-based solution for autonomous online navigation around an unknown target small celestial body. AstroSLAM is predicated on the formulation of the SLAM problem as an incrementally growing factor…
We present an approach for utilizing astrometric orbit information to improve the yield of planetary images and spectra from a follow-on direct detection mission. This approach is based on the notion-strictly hypothetical-that if a…