Detecting near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) is crucial for research in solar system and planetary science. In recent year, deep-learning methods have almost dominated the task. Since NEAs represent only one-thousandth of the pixels in images, we proposed a...
It is of great significance to apply the object detection methods to automatically detect boulders from planetary images and analyze their distribution. This contributes to the selection of candidate landing sites and the understanding of the geologi...
Detecting celestial bodies while in deep-space travel is a critical task for the correct execution of space missions. Major bodies such as planets are bright and therefore easy to observe, while small bodies can be faint and therefore difficult to ob...
On-orbit autonomous relative navigation performance strongly depends on both sensor suite and state reconstruction selection. Whenever that suite relies on image-based sensors working in the visible spectral band, the illumination conditions strongly...
Asteroid mining offers vital sources for improving human lives and provides opportunities for interplanetary missions and space travel. There are many professional commercial space companies that are only investing billions of dollars on asteroids mi...
Asteroids are remnants of primordial material from the early stages of solar system formation, approximately 4.6 billion years ago, and they preserve invaluable records of the processes underlying planetary evolution. Investigating asteroids provides...
Small bodies in the Solar System are appealing targets for scientific and technological space missions, owing to their diversity in intrinsic and extrinsic properties, besides orbit and other factors. Missions to small bodies pass through the critica...
The extra-solar planetary system Luyten is relatively close (12.3 light years) to our Sun. The Luyten’s red dwarf star is orbited by four planets, two of them Earth-like (in mass) and in 4:1 resonance. Extra-solar systems might contain asteroid...
The Near-Earth Asteroid 162173 Ryugu is a C-type asteroid which preserves information about the ancient Solar System and is considered enriched in volatiles such as water and organics associated with the building blocks of life, and it is a potential...
Near-Earth Asteroids represent potential threats to human life because their trajectories may bring them in the proximity of the Earth. Monitoring these objects could help predict future impact events, but such efforts are hindered by the large numbe...
The solar system is populated with, other than planets, a wide variety of minor bodies, the majority of which are represented by asteroids. Most of their orbits are comprised of those between Mars and Jupiter, thus forming a population named Main Bel...
The Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) is a time-of-flight altimeter instrument being developed for the HERA mission, designated as Planetary ALTimeter (PALT). PALT is positioned in the center of the top face of the HERA probe, and therefore, it can...
The study of Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA) is crucial for human safety. Small hazardous asteroids with small radar cross sections are not easy to detect, track, and characterize due to the small signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the radar echo. This manusc...
We detail the use of the University of Tasmania’s (UTAS) optical and radio telescopes to conduct observations of near-Earth asteroids from 2021 to 2024. The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex transmitted a radio signal at 7159.45 MHz, wi...
Blazars are a subclass of active galactic nuclei (AGN) having relativistic jets aligned within a few degrees of our line-of-sight and form the majority of the AGN detected in the TeV regime. The Fermi-Large Area Telescope (LAT) is a pair-conversion t...
For the requirements of the multi-means observation and emergency monitoring of space objects, including space debris and near-earth asteroids, this paper analyzes the astronomical observation conditions in the stratosphere, which is the region of th...
Carbon-based compounds are widespread throughout the Universe, including abiotic molecules that are the components of the life as we know it. This article reviews the space missions that have aimed to detect organic matter and biosignatures in planet...
Primordial black holes (PBHs) in the asteroid-mass range, with typical masses
Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is a ubiquitous molecule in the Universe. It is a compound that is easily produced in significant yields in prebiotic simulation experiments using a reducing atmosphere. HCN can spontaneously polymerise under a wide set of expe...
The Impact Monitoring (IM) of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) is a young field of research, considering that 22 years ago precise algorithms to compute an impact probability with the Earth did not exist. On the other hand, the year 2020 just passed saw the...
Ground-based detection of spaceborne dynamic objects, such as near-Earth asteroids and space debris, is essential for ensuring the safety of space operations. This paper presents YOLO-Dynamic, a novel detection algorithm aimed at addressing the limit...
A modified gravity model of Starobinsky inflation and primordial black hole production is proposed in good (within
We investigate the topological types and bifurcations of periodic orbits in the gravitational field of irregular bodies by the well-known two parameter analysis method. Results show that the topological types of periodic orbits are determined by the...
The present work addresses pulsar Crab Nebula emissions from point of view of their modeling and applications for asteroid detection and imaging by applying inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) principles. A huge value of the plasma’s effect...
The increasing need for autonomy in space exploration missions is becoming more and more relevant in the design of missions to small bodies. The long communication latencies and sensitivity of the system to unplanned environmental perturbations mean...
Robotic Astronomical Observatories (RAOs) have provided very good results in different research projects in astrophysics/astronomy. Their applications in the detection, tracking, and identification of near-Earth objects have contributed to the identi...
A laser altimeter using code modulation techniques receives a backscattered pulse wider than the transmitted rectangular pulse when scanning a rough or sloped target surface. This leads to degrading the ranging performance in terms of signal-to-noise...
Glycine (Gly), NH2CH2COOH, is the simplest amino acid. Although it has not been directly detected in the interstellar gas-phase medium, it has been identified in comets and meteorites, and its synthesis in these environments has been simulated in ter...
Advancements in space exploration and sample return technology present a unique opportunity to leverage sample return capsules (SRCs) towards studying atmospheric entry of meteoroids and asteroids. Specifically engineered for the secure transport of...
Recent detections of potentially habitable exoplanets around sunlike stars demand increased exploration of the physical conditions that can sustain life, by whatever methods available. Insight into these conditions can be gained by considering the mu...
Impact cratering determined by collisions with meteorites and asteroids is considered one of the main natural processes in the Solar System, modifying the planets and their satellites surface during time. The Earth includes in its impact record a sma...
Electric space propulsion is a technology which is employed on a continuously increasing number of spacecrafts. While the current focus of their application area is on telecommunication satellites and on space exploration missions, several new ideas...
Grapevine germplasm collections are unique repositories of grape cultivars; therefore, it is necessary to minimize their infection with pathogens, including viruses, and develop various programs to maintain them in a virus-free state. In our study, w...
The aim of this study was to develop a simple and rapid inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometric (ICP-OES) method for the determination of 17 metals (Ag, Al, B, Ba, Bi, Ca, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, Ni, Pb, Tl and Zn) in packaged s...
Nocardiosis is an infection caused by Gram-positive, saprophytic bacteria most often affecting immunocompromised hosts. The lungs, central nervous system, and skin are the sites most typically involved, although any organ may be affected. Skeletal in...
This paper tackles the problem of spacecraft relative navigation to support the reach and capture of a passively cooperative space target using a chaser platform equipped with a robotic arm in the frame of future operations such as On Orbit Servicing...
Hydrated silica, multication amorphous silicates, and shock-produced silica glasses occur in diverse extraterrestrial materials. Although these phases may exhibit overlapping diffraction signatures, they differ fundamentally in composition, hydration...
Planetary Defense (PD) has become a critical effort of protecting our home planet by discovering potentially hazardous objects (PHOs), simulating the potential impact, and mitigating the threats. Due to the lack of structured architecture and framewo...
The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instrument onboard the GOES 16 and 17 satellites can be used to detect bolides in the atmosphere. This capacity is unique because GLM provides semi-global, continuous coverage and releases its measurements pub...
Grapevine leafroll disease (GLD) is one of the most economically damaging virus diseases in grapevine, with grapevine leafroll-associated virus 1 (GLRaV-1) and grapevine leafroll-associated virus 3 (GLRaV-3) as the main contributors. This study compl...
The search for signs of life through the detection of exoplanet atmosphere biosignature gases is gaining momentum. Yet, only a handful of rocky exoplanet atmospheres are suitable for observation with planned next-generation telescopes. To broaden pro...
Deep space exploration missions face technical challenges such as long-distance communication delays and high-precision autonomous positioning. Traditional ground-based telemetry and control as well as inertial navigation schemes struggle to meet mis...
Recent discoveries have demonstrated that the surfaces of Mars, Ceres and other celestial bodies, as well as asteroids and comets, are characterized by the presence of ammonium-bearing minerals. A careful study of remote data compared with the analys...
Here, we discuss the possibility of the admixture of baryons to the DM primordial planets, with the DM particles varying in mass from 20 GeV to 100 GeV. We have considered different fractions of admixture particles to form the planet. The mass of the...