Related papers: Measuring the Interplanetary Medium with a Solar S…
A multi-institutional, multi-national science team will soon submit a NASA proposal to build a constellation of spacecraft to fly into the near-Earth solar wind in a swarm spanning a multitude of scales in order to obtain critically needed…
A highly reflective sail provides a way to propel a spacecraft out of the solar system using solar radiation pressure. The closer the spacecraft is to the Sun when it starts its outward journey, the larger the radiation pressure and so the…
The primary challenge of rocket propulsion is the burden of needing to accelerate the spacecraft's own fuel, resulting in only a logarithmic gain in maximum speed as propellant is added to the spacecraft. Light sails offer an attractive…
Ultrathin lightsails propelled by laser radiation pressure to relativistic speeds are currently the most promising route for flyby-based exoplanet exploration. However, there has been a notable lack of experimental characterization of key…
New means of interstellar travel are now being considered by various research teams, assuming lightweight spaceships to be accelerated via either laser or solar radiation to a significant fraction of the speed of light (c). We recently…
The Solar Gravitational Lens (SGL) enables resolved imaging and spectroscopy of nearby terrestrial exoplanets, but useful science begins only after a spacecraft reaches roughly 650-900 astronomical units (AU). A 20 yr lower-bound trip to…
Radiation pressure afforded by natural broadband sunlight upon a transmissive diffractive sail is theoretically and numerically investigated. A grating period of one micrometer is found to convert 83% of the solar black body spectrum into…
The ongoing Gaia mission of ESA will provide accurate spatial and kinematical information for a large fraction of stars in the Galaxy. Interstellar extinction and line absorption studies toward a large number of stars at different distances…
The successes of previous and current Mars rovers have encouraged space agencies worldwide to pursue additional planetary exploration missions with more ambitious navigation goals. For example, NASA's planned Mars Sample Return mission will…
Aims. Based on measurements by the Ulysses spacecraft and high-resolution modelling of the motion of interstellar dust (ISD) through the heliosphere we predict the ISD flow in the inner planetary system and on to the Earth. This is the…
The exploration of interstellar space will require autonomous navigation systems that do not rely on tracking from the Earth. Here I develop a method to determine the 3D position and 3D velocity of a spacecraft in deep space using a star…
A new electrostatic ramjet space engine is proposed and analyzed. The upper atmosphere (85 -1000 km) is extremely dense in ions (millions per cubic cm). The interplanetary medium contains positive protons from the solar wind. A charged ball…
Meteoroids originating from the local interstellar medium, traverse the solar system. This has been proven by in situ measurements by interplanetary spacecraft as well as highly sensitive radar measurements. Early attempts to detect…
There is a desire to observe the sun's poles to further deepen our understanding of solar activity. However, because of the large speeds needed to perform out-of-ecliptic plane maneuvers, chemical and electric rocket propulsion mechanisms…
Leveraging advancements in micro-scale technology, we propose a fleet of autonomous, low-cost, small solar sails for interplanetary exploration. The Berkeley Low-cost Interplanetary Solar Sail (BLISS) project aims to utilize small-scale…
Solar sails propelled by radiation pressure enable space missions that cannot be achieved using chemical rockets alone. Significant in-space propulsion for missions such as a solar polar orbiter may be achieved with a sail that deviates…
We suggest the all-sky survey at the International Space Station by four little wide-angle telescopes with polarization filters and CCD-arrays spread by several meters one from another. The video information processing will be carried out…
We study the drag force on dust grains moving at relativistic velocities through interstellar gas and explore its application. First, we derive a new analytical formula of the drag force at high energies and find that it is significantly…
Spacecraft kinematics, peak perihelion temperature and space environment effects during solar-radiation-pressure acceleration for a beryllium hollow-body interstellar solar sail inflated with hydrogen fill gas are investigated. We…
In this study we considered a solar sail coated with materials that undergo thermal desorption at a specific temperature, as a result of heating by solar radiation at a particular heliocentric distance. Three different scenarios, that only…