Related papers: Scheduling Ground-Based Telescope Observations wit…
Small satellites have proven to be viable Earth observation platforms. These satellites operate in regimes of increased trajectory uncertainty where traditional planning approaches can lead to sub-optimal task plans, limiting science…
Einstein Telescope (ET) is the European project for a gravitational-wave (GW) observatory of third-generation. In this paper we present a comprehensive discussion of its science objectives, providing state-of-the-art predictions for the…
It is currently feasible to start a continuous digital record of the entire sky sensitive to any visual magnitude brighter than 15 each night. Such a record could be created with a modest array of small telescopes, which collectively…
The TBT project is being developed under ESA's General Studies and Technology Programme (GSTP), and shall implement a test-bed for the validation of an autonomous optical observing system in a realistic scenario within the Space Situational…
Monitoring of the Sun and its activity is a task of growing importance in the frame of space weather research and awareness. Major space weather disturbances at Earth have their origin in energetic outbursts from the Sun: solar flares,…
Climate change is affecting and will increasingly affect astronomical observations. In this paper, we investigated the role some key weather parameters play in the quality of astronomical observations, and analysed their long-term trends…
Earth Observation (EO) satellite scheduling (deciding which imaging tasks to perform and when) is a well-studied combinatorial optimization problem. Existing methods typically assume that the operational constraint model is fully specified…
Targeted spectroscopic exoplanet surveys face the challenge of maximizing their planet detection rates by means of careful planning. The number of possible observation combinations for a large exoplanet survey, i.e., the sequence of…
Space-based and ground-based telescopes have extensively documented the impact of satellites on astronomical observations. With the proliferation of satellite mega-constellation programs, their influence on astronomical observations has…
Aiming at improving the survey efficiency of the Wide Field Survey Telescope, we have developed a basic scheduling strategy that takes into account the telescope characteristics, observing conditions, and weather conditions at the Lenghu…
The ESA Euclid mission is a space telescope that will survey ~15,000 square degrees of the sky, primarily to study the distant universe (constraining cosmological parameters through the lensing of galaxies). It is also expected to observe…
Forecasting optical turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere has been an ambitious challenge for the astronomical scientific community for several decades. While earlier research primarily focused on whether it was possible to predict optical…
Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy is now well established as a key observational approach to address critical topics at the frontiers of astroparticle physics and high-energy astrophysics. Whilst the field of TeV astronomy was once dominated…
Ground-based synoptic solar observations provide critical contextual data used to model the large-scale state of the heliosphere. The next decade will see a combination of ground-based telescopes and space missions that will study our Sun's…
In this contribution we present preliminary results of a study applied to the Observatories of Roque de Los Muchachos (La Palma) and Teide (Tenerife) in Canary Islands aiming to investigate the possibility to implement an automatic system…
The Earth's albedo is a fundamental climate parameter for understanding the radiation budget of the atmosphere. It has been traditionally measured from space platforms, but also from the ground for sixteen years from Big Bear Solar…
Astronomy relies heavily on time domain observations. To maximize the scientific yield of such observations, astronomers must carefully match the observational cadence to the phenomena of interest. This presents significant scheduling…
While building up a catalog of Earth orbiting objects, if the available optical observations are sparse, not deliberate follow ups of specific objects, no orbit determination is possible without previous correlation of observations obtained…
In order to avoid collisions with space debris, the near Earth orbit must be continuously scanned by either ground- or spaced-based facilities. For the low Earth orbit, radar telescopes are the workhorse for this task, especially due to…
The growing number of satellite constellations in low Earth orbit (LEO) enhances global communications and Earth observation, and support of space commerce is a high priority of many governments. At the same time, the proliferation of…