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A solar sail is one of the most promising space exploration system because of its theoretically infinite specific impulse using solar radiation pressure (SRP). Recently, some researchers proposed "transformable spacecrafts" that can…
Asteroid restructuring uses robotics, self replication, and mechanical automatons to autonomously restructure an asteroid into a large rotating space station. The restructuring process makes structures from asteroid oxide materials; uses…
Global warming is one of the problems of human civilization and decarbonization policy is the main solution to this problem. In this work, we propose using the gravity-assist by the asteroids to increase the orbital distance of the Earth…
This paper presents a trajectory optimization and control approach for the guidance of an orbital four-arm robot in extravehicular activities. The robot operates near the target spacecraft, enabling its arm's end-effectors to reach the…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAVs) are attaining more and more maneuverability and sensory ability as a promising teleoperation platform for intelligent interaction with the environments. This work presents a novel 5-degree-of-freedom (DoF)…
In this paper, a practical approach to the trajectory design for asteroid exploration missions with CubeSats is presented. When applied trajectories are sought, operative concerns and uncertainties affecting the spacecraft dynamics must be…
The dynamical behavior of spacecraft around asteroids is a key element in design of such missions. An asteroid's irregular shape, non-spherical mass distribution and its rotational sate make the dynamics of spacecraft quite complex. This…
Spacecraft relative motion planning is concerned with the design and execution of maneuvers relative to a nominal target. These types of maneuvers are frequently utilized in missions such as rendezvous and docking, satellite inspection and…
Atmospheric drag calculation error greatly reduce the low-earth orbit spacecraft trajectory prediction fidelity. To solve the issue, the "correction - prediction" strategy is usually employed. In the method, one parameter is fixed and other…
Despite recent advances in control, reinforcement learning, and imitation learning, developing a unified framework that can achieve agile, precise, and robust whole-body behaviors, particularly in long-horizon tasks, remains challenging.…
Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Manipulators (UAMs) have shown promising potentials to transform passive sensing missions into active 3-dimension interactive missions, but they still suffer from some difficulties impeding their wide…
An increasing number of Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) in the range of a few hundred meters to a few kilometres in size have relatively high spin rates, from less than 4 h, down to $\sim$2.2 h, depending on spectral type. For some of these…
Spectral characterization of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) has revealed a continuum of space-weathered states for the surfaces of S-complex NEAs, with Q-class NEAs, an S-complex subclass, most closely matching the un-weathered surfaces of…
A robust drift-safe rendezvous trajectory optimization tool is developed in this work, with applications to orbital rendezvous and proximity operations. The method is based on direct collocation and utilizes a sequential convex programming…
This paper reports the discovery and orbital characterization of two extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs), 2016 QV$_{89}$ and 2016 QU$_{89}$, which have orbits that appear similar to that of a previously known object, 2013 UH$_{15}$. All…
Sailing robots provide a low-cost solution to conduct the ocean missions such as marine exploration, pollution detection, and border surveillance, etc. However, compared with other propeller-driven surface vessels, sailboat suffers in…
Electrical space thrusters show important advantages for applications in outer space compared to chemical thrusters, as they allow a longer mission lifetime with lower weight and propellant consumption. Mature technologies on the market…
Dynamic targeting (DT) is a spacecraft autonomy concept in which sensor data is acquired and rapidly analyzed and used to drive subsequent observation. We describe the low Earth orbit application of this approach in which lookahead imagery…
With the growing deployment of small satellites (such as CubeSats, Nanosats, Picosats, and Femtosats) in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for targeted applications like imaging, communication, data storage, and rendezvous-docking mission, there is…
State estimation and control is a well-studied problem in conventional aerial vehicles such as multi-rotors. But multi-rotors, while versatile, are not suitable for all applications. Due to turbulent airflow from ground effects,…