Autonomous spacecraft relative navigation technology has been planned for and applied to
many famous space missions. The development of on-board electronics systems has …

Detailed surface images of the Moon and Mars reveal hundreds of cave-like openings.
These cave-like openings are theorized to be remnants of lava-tubes and their interior …

Current deep-space missions heavily count on ground-based operations. Although reliable,
ground slots will saturate soon, so hampering the current momentum in space exploration …

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 …

There are more than 17,000 asteroids found near Earth and nearly 2 million asteroids
estimated in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroid come in diverse forms, some …

THE space sector is experiencing flourishing growth. Evidence is mounting that the near
future will be characterized by a large amount of deep-space missions [1–4]. In the last …

Stand-alone deep-space CubeSats are the future of the space sector. For limited budget
reasons, these spacecraft need to follow operational-compliant (OC) trajectories: transfers …

Advances in planetary robotics have led to wheeled robots that have beamed back
invaluable science data from the surface of the Moon and Mars. However, these large …

Exploration of small bodies, namely comets and asteroids remain a challenging endeavor
due to their low gravity. The risk is so high that missions such as Hayabusa II and OSIRIS …

There are thousands of asteroids in near-Earth space and millions expected in the Main
Belt. They are diverse in their physical properties and compositions. They are also time …