Related papers: Star-based Navigation in the Outer Solar System
NASA has been considering a solar sail that would accelerate a craft to a high velocity (~ 14 AU/yr) by the time it reached 5 AU. Then the sail would be dropped and the craft would coast alone to deep space. We propose that the sail be…
Autonomous spacecraft relative navigation technology has been planned for and applied to many famous space missions. The development of on-board electronics systems has enabled the use of vision-based and LiDAR-based methods to achieve…
Astrophysical measurements away from the 1 AU orbit of Earth can enable several astrophysical science cases that are challenging or impossible to perform from Earthbound platforms, including: building a detailed understanding of the…
The study of planets beyond the solar system and the search for other habitable planets and life is just beginning. Ground-based (radial velocity and transits) and space-based surveys (transits and astrometry) will identify planets spanning…
We report new methods for evaluating realistic observing programs that search stars for planets by direct imaging, where observations are selected from an optimized star list, and where stars can be observed multiple times. We show how…
Cosmology with large interferometric telescopes is a rich and largely unexplored subject, involving three types of measurement: astrometric measurement of absolute distances and proper motions, dispersions of relative proper motions, and…
Transits of bright stars offer a unique opportunity to study detailed properties of extrasolar planets that cannot be determined through radial-velocity observations. We propose a new technique to find such systems using all-sky…
This paper presents an adaptive observer-based navigation strategy for spacecraft in Circular Relative Orbit (CRO) scenarios, addressing challenges in proximity operations like formation flight and uncooperative target inspection. The…
We use seven year's worth of observations from the Catalina Sky Survey and the Siding Spring Survey covering most of the northern and southern hemisphere at galactic latitudes higher than 20 degrees to search for serendipitously imaged…
The solar gravitational lens (SGL) provides a factor of $10^{11}$ amplification for viewing distant point sources beyond our solar system. As such, it may be used for resolved imaging of extended sources, such as exoplanets, not possible…
This paper introduces a statistical model and corresponding sequential Bayesian estimation method for terrain-based navigation using side-scan sonar (SSS) data. The presented approach relies on slant range measurements extracted from the…
Aims: We develop a method for estimating the properties of stellar winds for low-mass main-sequence stars between masses of 0.4 and 1.1 solar masses at a range of distances from the star. Methods: We use 1D thermal pressure driven…
The inverse square law of gravity is poorly probed by experimental tests at distances of ~ 10 AUs. Recent analysis of the trajectory of the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft have shown an unmodeled acceleration directed toward the Sun which was…
The autonomous real-time optical navigation of planetary UAV is of the key technologies to ensure the success of the exploration. In such a GPS denied environment, vision-based localization is an optimal approach. In this paper, we proposed…
We aim to explain the paradigm of a learning model, as well as to validate it in an applied case of an astronomy problem where the data used are declination, parallax, radial velocity of a star, as well as its annual variation in right…
Interstellar objects (ISOs) are small bodies that can travel through our solar system from other star systems. When present in our solar system, they represent an opportunity to study the properties and origins of these objects, as well as…
We show that a space-based gravitational microlensing survey for terrestrial extra-solar planets is feasible in the near future, and could provide a nearly complete picture of the properties of planetary systems in our Galaxy. We present…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
Voyager 3 is a concept mission that sends a space telescope to the interstellar medium in a reasonable amount of time. Voyager 3 would take a direct image of an exoplanet using the solar gravitational lensing at the distance of 550…
Precise exoplanet characterization requires precise classification of exoplanet host stars. The masses of host stars are commonly estimated by comparing their spectra to those predicted by stellar evolution models. However,…