Related papers: Threat Mitigation: The Gravity Tractor
I present a simple scheme for the treatment of gravitational interactions on galactic scales. In analogy to known mechanisms of quantum field theory, I assume ad hoc that gravitation is mediated by virtual exchange particles - gravitons -…
We detail a platform for partial g environment and an experiment for simulated impacts on asteroid surfaces based on it. The partial g environment is created by a two stage approach: First, create microgravity using the ZARM drop tower.…
About 10% of the observed asteroids have rotational periods lower than P = 3 h and they seem to be relatively close to the spin barrier. Yet, the rotation has often been neglected in simulations of asteroid collisions. To determine the…
The tractor-trailer robot consists of a drivable tractor and one or more non-drivable trailers connected via hitches. Compared to typical car-like robots, the addition of trailers provides greater transportation capability. However, this…
Summary: In the past decade both scientists and laymen have probably heard at least once through the newspapers, TV and Internet that a new asteroid has been discovered with non-zero (sometimes "high") probability of collision with the…
A concept for an Impact Mitigation Preparation Mission, called Don Quijote, is to send two spacecraft to a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA): an Orbiter and an Impactor. The Impactor collides with the asteroid while the Orbiter measures the…
In this article, theory-based analytical methodologies of astrophysics employed in the modern era are suitably operated alongside a test research-grade telescope to image and determine the orbit of a near-earth asteroid from original…
Modified gravity (MOG) is a covariant, relativistic, alternative gravitational theory whose field equations are derived from an action that supplements the spacetime metric tensor with vector and scalar fields. Both gravitational (spin 2)…
Gromov--Wasserstein optimal transport (GWOT) aligns metric measure spaces by matching their within-domain relational structures, but large-scale GWOT remains challenging because its objective is nonconvex and projection onto the transport…
We propose NH-TTC, a general method for fast, anticipatory collision avoidance for autonomous robots having arbitrary equations of motions. Our proposed approach exploits implicit differentiation and subgradient descent to locally optimize…
The classical problem of attitude stability in a central gravity field is generalized to that on a stationary orbit around a uniformly-rotating asteroid. This generalized problem is studied in the framework of geometric mechanics. Based on…
We propose a combined method for the collaborative transportation of a suspended payload by a team of rotorcraft. A recent distance-based formation-motion control algorithm based on assigning distance disagreements among robots generates…
In recent years, understanding asteroids has shifted from light worlds to geological worlds by exploring modern spacecraft and advanced radar and telescopic surveys. However, flyby in 2029 will be an opportunity to conduct an internal…
Photometric observations of asteroids show that some of them are in non-principal axis rotation state (free precession), called tumbling. Collisions between asteroids have been proposed as a possible asteroid rotation excitation mechanism.…
Low-thrust trajectories play a crucial role in optimizing scientific output and cost efficiency in asteroid belt missions. Unlike high-thrust transfers, low-thrust trajectories require solving complex optimal control problems. This…
The main principle of affine quantum gravity is the strict positivity of the matrix \{\hat g_{ab}(x)\} composed of the spatial components of the local metric operator. Canonical commutation relations are incompatible with this principle,…
Mobility on asteroids by multi-limbed climbing robots is expected to achieve our exploration goals in such challenging environments. We propose a mobility strategy to improve the locomotion safety of climbing robots in such harsh…
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…
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…
A method is proposed for constraining the Galactic gravitational potential from high precision observations of the phase space coordinates of a system of relaxed tracers. The method relies on an "ergodic" assumption that the observations…