Search Publications
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…
Model-driven engineering for low-code ground support equipment configuration and automatic test procedures definition
Carrasco, Alberto; Martínez, Agustín; Sánchez, Sebastián +4 more
Space domain systems must go through different types of ground testing. For system-level black-box functional testing, ground support equipment is built ad hoc, customized for each different mission. Building any of this specific equipment involves considerable engineering effort that can be diluted using techniques that allow reusing configuratio…
Data stream mining for predicting the thermal power consumption of the Mars Express spacecraft
Džeroski, Sašo; Kocev, Dragi; Stevanoski, Bozhidar +2 more
The Mars Express (MEX) spacecraft, operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), has been orbiting Mars for the past 18 years. During this period, it has provided unprecedented scientific data about the red planet, but it has also aged, and its batteries have degraded. Thus, MEX needs careful and accurate power modeling to continue its significant …
Solar Orbiter fine pointing Mode improvement in flight: Challenges and achievements
Cantiello, Ilario; Chapman, Patrick; Monroig, Guillaume +2 more
ESA Solar Orbiter was launched from Cape Canaveral in collaboration with NASA on the February 10, 2020 to start its journey around the Sun, with the commissioning phase ending in April 2020. After commissioning, ESA set a tighter pointing requirement goal to further improve the performance in Fine Pointing Mode, in preparation of the upcoming star…
Feasibility studies for a dust observatory between earth and the asteroid belt
Srama, Ralf; Klinkner, Sabine; Fugmann, Martin +17 more
Cosmic dust transports information about the composition and evolution of distant realms over space and time. Dust sources may be in our local neighbourhood, such as the surfaces of moons and small bodies, or further away, in the galactic environment. The interior of moons like Io or Enceladus are well known dust sources in our solar system. Dust …
In-flight verification of the engineering design data for the Energetic Particle Detector on board the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter
Wimmer-Schweingruber, Robert F.; Elftmann, Robert; Rodríguez-Pacheco, Javier +25 more
This work presents an overview of the in-flight engineering data of the Energetic Particle Detector (EPD) instrument suite during its first year of operation. EPD is part of the in-situ scientific payload of the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission which was launched in February 2020. After completion of its commissioning phase, Solar Orbiter started it…
Model-driven environment for configuration control and deployment of on-board satellite software
Carrasco, Alberto; Martínez, Agustín; Sánchez, Sebastián +3 more
This paper describes a model-driven environment for configuration control and deployment of on-board satellite software. The solution enables platform-aware software development through the use of modelling artefacts provided by a framework called MICOBS. The paper describes the proposed platform model, as well as the supporting models needed to 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/…
Electric sails are potentially more effective than light sails near most stars
Lingam, Manasvi; Loeb, Abraham
Electric sails are propulsion systems that generate momentum via the deflection of stellar wind particles through electric forces. Here, we investigate the relative merits of electric sails and light sails driven by stellar radiation pressure for F-, G-, K- and M-type stellar systems. We show that electric sails originating near M-dwarfs could att…