Related papers: Planetary Exploration 3.0: A Roadmap for Software-…
Mapping and exploration of a Martian terrain with an aerial vehicle has become an emerging research direction, since the successful flight demonstration of the Mars helicopter Ingenuity. Although the autonomy and navigation capability of…
Future planetary exploration envisions autonomous robotic agents operating under severe communication constraints, without global positioning, and with minimal human intervention. In such environments, agents must not only perceive and act,…
Our Robust, Explainable Autonomy for Scientific Icy Moon Operations (REASIMO) effort contributes to NASA's Concepts for Ocean worlds Life Detection Technology (COLDTech) program, which explores science platform technologies for ocean worlds…
The mission concept, Cosmic Origins Through UV Surveys (CETUS) is an all-UV space mission concept that was selected and funded by NASA for study in 2017. The main capabilities of CETUS that even Hubble doesn't have are: (1) wide-field…
The increasing number of space missions may overwhelm ground support infrastructure, prompting the need for autonomous deep-space guidance, navigation, and control (GN\&C) systems. These systems offer sustainable and cost-effective…
Exploration of the lunar south pole with a solar-powered rover is challenging due to the highly dynamic solar illumination conditions and the presence of permanently shadowed regions (PSRs). In turn, careful planning in space and time is…
Over the next decade we will witness the development of a new infrastructure in support of data-intensive scientific research, which includes Astronomy. This new networked environment will offer both challenges and opportunities to our…
NASA's new age of space exploration augurs great promise for deep space exploration missions whereby spacecraft should be independent, autonomous, and smart. Nowadays NASA increasingly relies on the concepts of autonomic computing,…
Laboratory studies for planetary science and astrobiology aimat advancing our understanding of the Solar System through the promotion of theoretical and experimental research into the underlying processes that shape it. Laboratory studies…
The recent growing interest in small solar system bodies such as asteroids and comets for scientific inspection, exploitation of resources, and planetary defense reasons is pushing the development of innovative engineering solutions to…
The Kepler Mission is exploring the diversity of planets and planetary systems. Its legacy will be a catalog of discoveries sufficient for computing planet occurrence rates as a function of size, orbital period, star-type, and insolation…
Conceptually exoplanet research has one foot in the discipline of Astrophysics and the other foot in Planetary Science. Research strategies for exoplanets will require efficient access to data and information from both realms. Astrophysics…
The search of life in the Universe is a fundamental problem of astrobiology and a major priority for NASA. A key area of major progress since the NASA Astrobiology Strategy 2015 (NAS15) has been a shift from the exoplanet discovery phase to…
The Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP) is chartered by the NASA Astrophysics Division to carry out science, research, and technology tasks that advance NASA's science goals for exoplanets. The ExEP Science Gap List is a compilation of…
This article establishes the Exploration-RRT algorithm: A novel general-purpose combined exploration and pathplanning algorithm, based on a multi-goal Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees (RRT) framework. Exploration-RRT (ERRT) has been…
We document how the narrative and the policies of space exploration in the U.S. have changed over the past 50 years. We first examine the history of the U.S. space exploration program and also assess three current conditions of space…
This chapter reviews for each province and destination of the Solar System the representative space missions that will have to be designed and implemented by 2061 to address the six key science questions about the diversity, origins,…
The Mars Life Explorer (MLE) mission concept offers a critical opportunity to investigate whether extant life exists within the mid-latitude ice deposits of Mars. However, MLE's current science traceability matrix emphasizes habitability…
Mars is the next destination after Earth to support terrestrial life. Decades of Mars exploration has fascinated space explorers to endeavour for a human expedition. But human Mars enterprise is complicated than conventional mission as the…
This article reviews the emerging field of exo-geoscience, focusing on the geological and geophysical processes thought to influence the evolution and (eu)habitability of rocky exoplanets. We examine the possible roles of planetary…