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Understanding technological spillovers: The case of main astrophysics European missions
Petroni, Giorgio; Venturini, Karen
Due to the complexity and relevance of the scientific problems they address, astrophysical exploration missions can be a fertile ground for technological spillover.
In the past, various space technologies, particularly in telecommunications, transportation, health care, and even military defense, spilled over or have been transferred from Spa…The inferred abundance of interstellar objects of technological origin
Loeb, Abraham; Ezell, Carson
Interstellar objects discovered crossing through the solar system can either be natural objects or technological artifacts from extraterrestrial civilizations. Evidence from our own civilization suggests that early-stage technological civilizations are already able to launch artificial objects beyond their star system, and early-state to late-stag…
A sign in space: An interdisciplinary exploration of the potential reception of an extraterrestrial signal
Ferri, Paolo; de Paulis, Daniela; Shostak, Seth +5 more
A Sign in Space is an interdisciplinary project by media artist Daniela de Paulis, in collaboration with the Green Bank Observatory, the National Institute for Astrophysics, the SETI Institute and the European Space Agency.
The project consists in transmitting a simulated extraterrestrial message as part of a live performance, using an ESA sp…The road to on-board crew autonomy: Using ISS' Columbus module as the basis for ground procedure automation
Hartmann, Carsten; Speth, Franca; Sabath, Dieter +1 more
Future human exploration missions require new concepts of operations since the international roadmap foresees stations with uncrewed periods (e.g. Lunar Gateway) and deep space missions with communication delays making real-time monitoring and control impossible (e.g. any vehicle on its way to or in orbit of Mars). As part of the commitment to ach…
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…