The Cislunar economy is thriving with innovative space systems and operation techniques to enhance and uplift the traditional approaches significantly. This paper brings about an approach for sustainable small satellite constellations to retain auton...
A pursuer and an evader can exploit low-energy, non-Keplerian trajectories in cislunar space, making it difficult to obtain the saddle point for impulsive orbital pursuit–evasion games (OPEG). To address this problem, this paper first establish...
As interest in Moon exploration grows, and efforts to establish an orbiting outpost intensify, accurate modeling of spacecraft dynamics in cislunar space is becoming increasingly important. Contrary to satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), where it ta...
With the increasing number of lunar missions, utilizing satellites in special orbits in the cislunar space as relay satellites to provide communication relay and navigation services for spacecraft near the Moon has become a hot topic. DRO (Distant Re...
This article presents a trajectory design problem concerning the exploration of potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids (PHAs) with reusable probes from cislunar space. A total of 20 probes, making round trips departing from and returning to a ser...
To address the triple challenges of data sparsity, highly nonlinear dynamics, and maneuver uncertainty in tracking non-cooperative targets in cislunar space, we propose a collaborative framework combining Particle Filter (PF) and Unscented Kalman Fil...
The cislunar space navigation satellite system is essential infrastructure for lunar exploration in the next phase. It relies on high-precision orbit determination to provide the reference of time and space. This paper focuses on constructing a navig...
Sustained cislunar logistics operations, including recurring support of the Lunar Gateway at EML1 and EML2, impose demanding propulsion requirements, including high ΔV budgets, restart capability, and long-duration propellant storage, which con...
In this paper, a trajectory optimization method without an initial value guess is proposed. The method employs the Lagrange multipliers from the nonlinear programming process to estimate the costate of the optimal control problem. It utilizes a homot...
This study assesses the navigation-service availability and observation geometry of a layered cislunar architecture using the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System Phase III (BDS-3) as the Earth-side primary source and distant retrograde orbit (DRO) and...
The reachable set of controlled dynamical systems is the set of all reachable states from an initial condition over a certain time horizon, subject to operational constraints and exogenous disturbances. In astrodynamics, rapid approximation of reacha...
The Linked Autonomous Interplanetary Satellite Orbit Navigation (LiAISON) technique enables cislunar spacecraft to obtain accurate position and velocity information, allowing full state estimation of two vehicles using only inter-satellite range (ISR...
With the increasing number of cislunar space missions, real-time and reliable navigation and communication services have become critical. It is necessary to develop the navigation constellations dedicated to cislunar space services. However, there ar...
Future 7G/8G networks are expected to integrate both terrestrial Internet and space-based networks. Space networks, including inter-planetary Internet such as cislunar and deep-space networks, will become an integral part of future 7G/8G networks. Ve...
The integrated heterogeneous 7G/8G networks may face multiple challenges for reliable data delivery such as link disruption, intermittent link availability, long latency and a highly lossy channel. Delay tolerant networking (DTN) was proposed as a hi...
The launch azimuth of the Naro Space Center is limited toward the south of the Korean peninsula, at 170 ± 10 degrees, suitable for the polar orbit, sun-synchronous orbit, and safety range issues. In this circumstance, one option to send a sate...
To meet the urgent need for high-precision tracking and reliable cataloging of non-cooperative targets in the Earth–Moon space, this paper proposes a GNSS Inter-Satellite Link and Connected Element Interferometry (CEI)-based measurement method...
The Lunar Gateway is a planned small space station that will orbit the Moon and serve as a central hub for NASA’s Artemis program to return humans to the lunar surface and to prepare for Mars missions. This work presents a hybrid optimization s...
This paper presents a feasibility study for a very high data rate receiver operating in the K/Ka-band suitable to future Moon exploration missions. The receiver specifications are outlined starting from the mission scenario and from a careful system...
In the realm of precision space applications, improving the accuracy of orbit determination (OD) is a crucial and demanding task, primarily because of the presence of measurement noise. To address this issue, a novel machine learning method based on...
Distant Retrograde Orbits (DROs) and Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbits (NRHOs), as categories of Lagrange orbits, have been selected for the construction of future deep-space navigation constellations in the Earth-Moon space due to their unique orbital tr...
Accurate characterization and compensation of Earth–Moon reference-clock differences are important for cislunar positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) architectures. This study develops an integrated analytical framework that connects modele...
The NASA’s Artemis project intends to bring humans back to the Moon in the next decade. A key element of the project will be the Lunar Gateway, a space station placed in a peculiar, near rectilinear Halo orbit in the vicinity of a collinear lib...
This paper investigates the trajectory design problem in the scenario of a multiple Sun-synchronous Orbit (SSO) space debris flyby mission from a DRO space station. At first, the characteristics of non-planar transfer from DRO to SSO in the Earth&nda...
Spacecraft catering to the Lunar Gateway or other “permanent” stations in the lunar vicinity would require frequent travel between periodic orbits around the Earth–Moon
Campaign-level assessments of human lunar exploration architectures are commonly performed over finite horizons, which can conceal systematic buffer drawdown and asset drift beyond the simulated window. This paper presents a reproducible methodology...
Solar particle events (SPEs) can pose serious threats for future crewed missions to the Moon. Historically, there have been several extreme SPEs that could have been dangerous for astronauts, and thus analyzing their potential risk on humans is an im...
This study focuses on the nonlinear departure dynamics of spacecraft from the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) to the outer regions of Selenocentric Space. By carefully selecting the combination of orbital parameters and the order of the evaluation...
Small-satellite mission design requires joint consideration of trajectory geometry, launch conditions, propulsion capacity, spacecraft mass, and operational lifetime. This study presents an integrated preliminary-design workflow combining Lambert-gri...
The unceasing quest for a profound comprehension of the Earth system propels the continuous evolution of novel methods for Earth observation. Of these, the Lagrange points situated in the cislunar space proffer noteworthy prospects for space-based Ea...
The distant retrograde orbit (DRO) serves as a strategic staging point for future cislunar missions, and geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) provides a practical departure option for rideshare low-thrust cargo missions. However, time-optimal low-thrus...
The paper describes the preliminary design of a phasing trajectory in a cislunar environment, where the third body perturbation is considered non-negligible. The working framework is the one proposed by the ESA’s Heracles mission in which a passive t...
Free-space optical (FSO) communication promises to bring fibre-like speeds to data transmissions between ground, sky and space. This is becoming more important in light of the increasing volume of data collected by aircraft and spacecraft. The Univer...
Deep space exploration offers the most profound opportunity for the expansion of humanity and our understanding of the universe but remains extremely challenging. Progress will continue to be paced by uncrewed missions followed up by crewed missions...
In the framework of the Artemis-1 mission, 10 CubeSats will be released, including the 6U CubeSat ArgoMoon, built by the Italian company Argotec and coordinated by the Italian Space Agency. The primary goal of ArgoMoon is to capture images of the Int...
The paper presents the development of a fully-safe, automatic rendezvous strategy between a passive vehicle and an active one orbiting around the Earth–Moon L2 Lagrangian point. This is one of the critical phases of future missions to permanently ret...
The possibility of prolonging space missions—and consequently the permanence of humans in space—depends on the possibility of providing them with an adequate supply of fresh foods to meet their nutritional requirements. This would allow s...
A novel station-keeping strategy leveraging periodic revolutions of homeomorphic orbits in the Elliptic Restricted Three-Body Problem within the pulsating frame is presented. A systemic approach founded on arc-length continuation is presented for the...
Deep space missions are recently gaining increasing interest from space agencies and industry, their maximum exponent being the establishment of a permanent station in cis-lunar orbit within this decade. To that end, autonomous rendezvous and docking...
As space systems evolve towards cis-lunar missions and beyond, the demand for precise yet low-size, -weight, and -power (SWaP) clocks and synchronization methods becomes increasingly critical. We introduce a novel clock synchronization approach based...
The Moon has a large potential for space exploration and mining valuable resources. In particular, 3He provides rich sources of non-radioactive fusion fuel to fulfill cislunar and Earth’s energy demands, if found economically feasible. The pres...
The electric solar wind sail, or E-sail, is a propellantless interplanetary propulsion system concept. By deflecting solar wind particles off their original course, it can generate a propulsive effect with nothing more than an electric charge. The hi...
A foundational model has been developed based on trends built from empirical data of space exploration and computing power through the first six plus decades of the Space Age, which projects the earliest possible launch dates for human-crewed mission...
Today, Moon exploration is driven by the desire to expand the human presence beyond Earth and to use its resources. This requires the development of reliable navigation systems that can provide positioning information accurately and continuously on t...
Precise orbit determination for multi-spacecraft deep space missions faces challenges including long communication delays, sparse tracking, dynamic model uncertainties, and inefficient data fusion. Presenting a hybrid estimation architecture, this st...
Communication transmission in the near-Moon space is a critical enabler of scientific exploration in this region. However, the communication network in near-Moon space shows trends of diversification, heterogeneity, and collaboration, posing signific...
The lunar south pole has gained significant attention due to its unique scientific value and potential for supporting future human exploration. Its potential water ice reservoirs and favourable conditions for long-term habitation make it a strategic...
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...
In response to the increasing demand for high-precision navigation of satellites operating in the cislunar space, this study introduces an onboard orbit determination algorithm considering both convergence and computational efficiency, referred to as...
Deep space missions, and particularly cislunar endeavors, are becoming a major field of interest for the space industry, including for the astrodynamics research community. While near-Earth missions may be completely covered by perturbed Keplerian dy...