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Proprioceptive swarms for celestial body exploration
Cottiga, Simone; Caruso, Matteo; Gallina, Paolo +1 more
The exploration of small celestial bodies has been a very active field ever since the dawn of space exploration. However, traditional approaches based on monolithic landers allow only the area in the immediate vicinity to the landing spot to be examined. Using mobile systems like rovers allow for better coverage, but at considerable cost and compl…
Peaks, notches, and lowlands of comet (67P) Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Burov, A. A.; Guerman, A. D.; Nikonov, V. I.
We study here the local minima, maxima, and saddle points of the augmented potential on the surface of a small celestial body with application to comet (67P) Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The isolines of the augmented potential on this surface are determined, in particular, those corresponding to the saddle points. The results are applied to reveal the c…
Icarus: In-situ monitoring of the surface degradation on a near-Sun asteroid
Granvik, Mikael; Lehtinen, Tuomas; Bellome, Andrea +1 more
Icarus is a mission concept designed to record the activity of an asteroid during a close encounter with the Sun. The primary science goal of the mission is to unravel the nontrivial mechanism(s) that destroy asteroids on orbits with small perihelion distances. Understanding the destruction mechanism(s) allows us to constrain the bulk composition …
A novel approach for optimal trajectory design with multiple operation modes of propulsion system, part 2
Taheri, Ehsan; Junkins, John L.; Kolmanovsky, Ilya +1 more
Equipping a spacecraft with multiple solar-powered electric engines (of the same or different types) compounds the task of optimal trajectory design due to presence of both real-valued inputs (power input to each engine in addition to the direction of thrust vector) and discrete variables (number of active engines). Each engine can be switched on/…
Pattern recognition in time series for space missions: A rosetta magnetic field case study
Glassmeier, K. -H.; Richter, I.; Ostaszewski, K. +4 more
Time series analysis is a technique widely employed in space science. In unpredictable environments like space, scientific analysis relies on large data sets to enable interpretation of observations. Artificial signal interferences caused by the spacecraft itself further impede this process. The most time consuming part of these studies is the eff…
Approximation for attraction field of irregular celestial bodies using four massive points
Burov, Alexander A.; Guerman, Anna D.; Nikonova, Ekaterina A. +1 more
Approximation of the gravitational field of an irregular celestial body by the gravitational attraction field of four massive points is studied here in the framework of K-means method, known from the theory of pattern recognition. Using this approach, the simplified models for gravitational fields of asteroid (1620) Geographos and comet (67P) Chur…
The search campaign to identify and image the Philae Lander on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Sierks, H.; Güttler, C.; Deller, J. +30 more
On the 12th of November 2014, the Rosetta Philae Lander descended to make the first soft touchdown on the surface of a comet - comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. That soft touchdown did occur but due to the failure in the firing of its two harpoons, Philae bounced and travelled across the comet making contact with the surface twice more before final…
The Rosetta science operations and planning implementation
Almeida, Miguel; Pérez-Ayúcar, Miguel; Merritt, Donald +8 more
The international Rosetta mission was launched on 2nd March 2004 for a ten year journey to its target destination, comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Following the January 2014 exit from a 31 month hibernation period, Rosetta approached and rendezvoused with the comet in August 2014. On 12th November 2014, the Philae lander was deployed from Rosetta…
The science planning process on the Rosetta mission
Altobelli, Nicolas; Choukroun, Mathieu; Vallat, Claire +9 more
The Rosetta mission arrived at comet 67 P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in Summer 2014, after more than 10 years in space. All previous mission encounters with a comet have provided a snapshot of the cometary activity at a given heliocentric distance. In contrast, Rosetta has escorted the comet nucleus for an extended period (>2 years) at a large range…
The final year of the Rosetta mission
Ferri, Paolo; Accomazzo, Andrea; Hubault, Armelle +6 more
The International Rosetta Mission was launched on 2nd March 2004 on its 10 year journey to rendezvous with comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta performed comet orbit insertion on the 6th of August 2014, after which it characterised the nucleus and orbited it at altitudes as low as a few kilometres. In November 2014 Rosetta delivered the lander…