Acta Astronautica最新文献

{"title":"Characterizing the impact of emergent technologies on earth communications reliance for crewed deep space missions","authors":"Annika E. Rollock ,&nbsp;David M. Klaus","doi":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.11.011","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.11.011","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Future human expeditions into deep space will encounter unique design challenges posed by the increasing distance from Earth, one of which is the inability to maintain near-continuous communication with ground support teams. As a result, the habitat and crew will require a higher level of operational self-sufficiency informed by onboard self-awareness and decision-making capabilities to accomplish functions that have historically involved extensive support from mission control personnel. These include, for example, task planning and anomaly detection, diagnosis and correction, as well as monitoring of consumable usage rates and system performance. Novel emergent technologies in the domain of ‘smart’ systems and digital twins can be employed to enable the onboard capabilities needed to function with minimal Earth communication. However, these technologies are generally low-TRL and difficult to incorporate through traditional systems engineering methods.</div><div>This work proposes an extension of utility theory to assess the potential reduction in Earth communication reliance between baseline and emergent technologies, scored through a summation of weighted attributes and evaluated against future deep space mission needs and constraints. Case studies are defined from technology under development in the NASA Habitats Optimized for Missions of Exploration (HOME) Space Technology Research Institute (STRI), a project charged with developing and evaluating technologies to enable highly autonomous deep space habitats, and compared to the current baseline technologies used onboard the International Space Station. Notional deep space mission needs and constraints are informed from current NASA plans for the Moon and Mars. These in turn are broken out into higher resolution attributes that are used to assess the operational capabilities of each emergent technology and whether it offers a potentially viable solution for deep space. These technology attributes are scored through a series of semi-structured subject-matter interviews and compared to notional deep space mission constraints. Additional considerations for technology maturation and integration are also discussed. The design analysis paradigm described and demonstrated here can be adapted to assess the degree to which other emergent technologies rely on Earth-based communication, and is intended to provide trade space considerations for future research and development towards deep space habitat self-sufficiency.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":44971,"journal":{"name":"Acta Astronautica","volume":"226 ","pages":"Pages 803-813"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142661013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Electrodynamic tether and brake sails combination deorbit design","authors":"Heng Jiang ,&nbsp;Rui Zhong ,&nbsp;Rui Qi","doi":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.11.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.11.007","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Given the growing threat of an impending space debris crisis, nations worldwide have intensified their research efforts in satellite deorbiting technologies. Electrodynamic tether and braking sails stand out as popular methods for spacecraft deorbiting that do away with the necessity for propellant. However, these methods possess their own set of limitations. This paper presents a holistic dynamical model for a fusion of electrodynamic tether and braking sails. The aim is to avoid the complex nonlinear dynamics during the deployment, retrieval, and dwell time of electrodynamic tether, while compensating for the insufficient trust generated by braking sails in high orbital environments. The objective is to enable satellite to deorbit swiftly and stably under a broader range of conditions. Specifically accomplishing the following three aspects: conceptualizing the design of an ideal equipment, implementing simulated deorbiting process, and conducting an efficiency comparative analysis with prevalent current deorbiting methods. Through numerical simulations, the effectiveness and feasibility of this proposed design have been validated.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":44971,"journal":{"name":"Acta Astronautica","volume":"226 ","pages":"Pages 669-678"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142660956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Closing the gap between SGP4 and high-precision propagation via differentiable programming","authors":"Giacomo Acciarini ,&nbsp;Atılım Güneş Baydin ,&nbsp;Dario Izzo","doi":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.10.063","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.10.063","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The simplified general perturbations 4 (SGP4) orbital propagation model is one of the most widely used methods for rapidly and reliably predicting the positions and velocities of objects orbiting Earth. Over time, SGP models have undergone refinement to enhance their efficiency and accuracy. Nevertheless, they still do not match the precision offered by high-precision numerical propagators, which can predict the positions and velocities of space objects in low-Earth orbit with significantly smaller errors.</div><div>In this study, we introduce a novel differentiable version of SGP4, named <span><math><mi>∂</mi></math></span>SGP4. By porting the source code of SGP4 into a differentiable program based on PyTorch, we unlock a whole new class of techniques enabled by differentiable orbit propagation, including spacecraft orbit determination, state conversion, covariance similarity transformation, state transition matrix computation, and covariance propagation. Besides differentiability, our <span><math><mi>∂</mi></math></span>SGP4 supports parallel propagation of a batch of two-line elements (TLEs) in a single execution and it can harness modern hardware accelerators like GPUs or XLA devices (e.g. TPUs) thanks to running on the PyTorch backend.</div><div>Furthermore, the design of <span><math><mi>∂</mi></math></span>SGP4 makes it possible to use it as a differentiable component in larger machine learning (ML) pipelines, where the propagator can be an element of a larger neural network that is trained or fine-tuned with data. Consequently, we propose a novel orbital propagation paradigm, ML-<span><math><mi>∂</mi></math></span>SGP4. In this paradigm, the orbital propagator is enhanced with neural networks attached to its input and output. Through gradient-based optimization, the parameters of this combined model can be iteratively refined to achieve precision surpassing that of SGP4. Fundamentally, the neural networks function as identity operators when the propagator adheres to its default behavior as defined by SGP4. However, owing to the differentiability ingrained within <span><math><mi>∂</mi></math></span>SGP4, the model can be fine-tuned with ephemeris data to learn corrections to both inputs and outputs of SGP4. This augmentation enhances precision while maintaining the same computational speed of <span><math><mi>∂</mi></math></span>SGP4 at inference time. This paradigm empowers satellite operators and researchers, equipping them with the ability to train the model using their specific ephemeris or high-precision numerical propagation data.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":44971,"journal":{"name":"Acta Astronautica","volume":"226 ","pages":"Pages 694-701"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142661019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Orbital motion control of an electrically charged spacecraft","authors":"M.A. Klyushin ,&nbsp;A.A. Tikhonov ,&nbsp;D.K. Giri","doi":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.10.043","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.10.043","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper, the orbital motion of an electrically charged spacecraft in the gravitational and magnetic fields of the Earth is investigated. The “direct magnetic dipole” is considered as a model of the geomagnetic field. The nonlinear non-autonomous system of differential equations of motion of the spacecraft center of mass in the Cartesian and spherical coordinate systems is derived. The analytical study of the influence of the Lorentz force on the orbital motion of a charged spacecraft is carried out. The approximate solution of the differential system is found. The results of numerical simulation of the spacecraft orbital motion based on the derived system of differential equations are presented. The analytical and numerical solutions are compared. The problem of stabilizing the spacecraft’s center of mass in the orbital plane is considered. Feedback control methods based on the use of jet engines are proposed. The technical justification of the proposed control methods is carried out. As a result, stabilization of an electrically charged spacecraft in a small neighborhood of the plane of the initial orbit is achieved. The motion of a spacecraft with a variable electric charge is considered. Methods of controlling orbital motion due to low thrust as a result of the Lorentz force effect are proposed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":44971,"journal":{"name":"Acta Astronautica","volume":"226 ","pages":"Pages 626-636"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142660952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Satellites state vectors refinement based on international laser ranging system using machine and deep learning","authors":"N.V. Belyakov ,&nbsp;S.V. Kolpinskiy","doi":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.10.029","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.10.029","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>With the increasing number of space objects in near-Earth space, the necessity of high-precision determination of space objects state vectors, as well as its classification by size, velocity, and potential danger to active satellites and space stations is becoming increasingly important for space flight safety services. In case of necessity of taking decisions of satellites orbit corrections and avoiding space emergency situations in real time mode artificial intelligence services could be used. The results proposed in this study show that machine and deep learning models can significantly improve the accuracy of determining the space objects state vector for classical numerical models and space catalogs, that is very essential task for space flights safety. The parameters of the Two-Line-Elements catalog and the model of it convertation to state vector are considered as input data to process, International Laser Ranging Service data from ground stations is considered as the ground truth measurements. The methodology considered here can be applied to any artificial space objects with various orbit parameters, thus, helps to provide space flights safety assurance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":44971,"journal":{"name":"Acta Astronautica","volume":"226 ","pages":"Pages 687-693"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142661011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Experimental study on the time-dependent spatial distribution of the three-dimensional magnetic field in an inductive pulsed plasma thruster","authors":"Che Bixuan,&nbsp;Wu Jianjun,&nbsp;Zhang Yu,&nbsp;Li Xiaokang,&nbsp;Cheng Mousen,&nbsp;Wang Moge","doi":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.11.012","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.11.012","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Inductive pulsed plasma thrust generates thrust by ionizing and accelerating plasma through pulsed inductive electromagnetic field. The spatial distribution of the magnetic field within the discharge region influences both the Lorentz force exerted on plasma and the electromagnetic coupling between plasma and circuit. An experimental prototype of inductive pulsed plasma thruster with high repeatability and a three-dimensional transient magnetic field measurement system with low integration error are established. Time-dependent spatial distribution of the magnetic field in the plasma is obtained by scanning measurement employing repeated pulse discharges. Combined with the results of high-speed photographing and electrical parameter measurements, the relationship between the evolution of plasma structure and the magnetic field penetration is discussed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":44971,"journal":{"name":"Acta Astronautica","volume":"226 ","pages":"Pages 601-609"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142660949","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Numerical study on flow and combustion properties of oblique detonation engine in a wide speed range","authors":"Yang Wang ,&nbsp;Fang Chen ,&nbsp;Yu Meng ,&nbsp;Elena Victorovna Mikhalchenko ,&nbsp;Evgeniya Igorevna Skryleva","doi":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.10.067","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.10.067","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Ensuring safe flight is a fundamental prerequisite for developing hypersonic propulsion systems. A comprehensive investigation of the steady boundary associated with oblique detonation wave in a wide speed range was conducted, with the aim of exploring the feasibility of oblique detonation engine across a diverse array of flight conditions. In this study, the wedge angle applicable in a wide-speed range was acquired via the analysis of oblique detonation wave polar curve. The configuration of the internal injection oblique detonation engine was subsequently designed and established, considering the effect of fuel-air inhomogeneity and complex wave system interactions within a confined combustor. The compressible Euler equations coupled with a 9-species and 19-step chemical reaction mechanism are employed to simulate the oblique detonation process. Ultimately, the safe flight envelope of an air-breathing vehicle equipped with the internal injection oblique detonation engine is mapped across a broad range of Mach numbers, demonstrating the engine’s capability to operate within the Mach 8 to 12 range. Furthermore, the findings reveal that decreasing either the flight Mach number or altitude results in unsteady oblique detonation wave within the internal injection oblique detonation engine combustor, however, reducing the equivalence ratio can stabilize the oblique detonation wave once again. This study provides valuable guidance for the design and wide-speed-range operation of an internal injection oblique detonation engine.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":44971,"journal":{"name":"Acta Astronautica","volume":"226 ","pages":"Pages 637-647"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142660953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Study on characteristics and prediction of the pressure drag of the swept strut under supersonic wide-range conditions","authors":"Guowei Luan,&nbsp;Junlong Zhang,&nbsp;Guangjun Feng,&nbsp;Xiaosi Li,&nbsp;Hongchao Qiu,&nbsp;Wen Bao","doi":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.11.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.11.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper, the numerical simulation of the swept strut ramjet combustor was carried out under wide-range conditions (<em>Ma</em>₃ = 1.8 ∼ 5.0), and the pressure drag characteristics of the swept strut were discussed. The results show that the pressure drag characteristics of the swept strut are related to the Mach number of the combustor inlet and the swept angle of the strut. The decreased boundary of the strut pressure drag coefficient gradually advances with the decrease of the Mach number of the combustor inlet. When <em>Ma</em>₃ = 1.8 ∼ 2.0, the pressure drag reduction boundary is <em>α</em> = 15°. When <em>Ma</em>₃ = 2.2 ∼ 2.8, the pressure drag reduction boundary is <em>α</em> = 45°. When <em>Ma</em>₃ = 3.0 ∼ 4.0, the pressure drag reduction boundary is <em>α</em> = 60°. When <em>Ma</em>₃ = 5.0, the pressure drag reduction boundary is <em>α</em> = 65°. In addition, with the decrease of the Mach number of the combustor inlet, the pressure drag reduction performance benefit brought by increasing the swept angle of the strut will gradually increase. Furthermore, a pressure drag coefficient prediction model suitable for wide-range conditions and multiple configurations of swept struts was proposed based on deep learning. The prediction model consists of two parts in series, which includes the prediction model of the surface pressure coefficient of the swept strut based on multilayer perceptron (MLP) and the prediction model of the pressure drag coefficient of the swept strut based on convolutional neural network (CNN). To improve the prediction accuracy of the MLP model, new training samples were added based on the ensemble-based uncertainty quantification, and the improved MLP model was obtained by retraining. The results show that both the two prediction models have high prediction accuracy under the effect of multiple complex flow characteristics on the strut. The results of this study are helpful to provide a reference for the aerodynamic drag reduction design of the strut in the wide-speed supersonic combustor.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":44971,"journal":{"name":"Acta Astronautica","volume":"226 ","pages":"Pages 846-859"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142702673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Synthetic thermal image generation and processing for close proximity operations","authors":"Lucia Bianchi,&nbsp;Michele Bechini,&nbsp;Matteo Quirino,&nbsp;Michèle Lavagna","doi":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.10.061","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.10.061","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The new scenarios foreseen in forthcoming space missions have increased interest towards optical-based relative navigation techniques, which have demonstrated efficacy in a variety of operational conditions. Although object detection methods have predominantly been used within the visible spectrum, optical payloads struggle in weak lighting conditions and are susceptible to overexposure. Consequently, thermal imaging systems are being investigated as a potential solution, as their integration into the current systems would greatly extend future mission capabilities. This study seeks to fill the gap in literature by assessing the performance of state-of-the-art object detection algorithms with images captured in the thermal spectrum. Given the scarcity of readily available thermal infrared (TIR) images captured in orbit, a novel rendering pipeline is implemented to generate physically accurate thermal images relevant to close-proximity scenarios. These synthetic representations feature a simplified target spacecraft against Earth and deep space backgrounds, including variations in illumination conditions, material properties, relative state, and scale. To ensure realistic outputs, the radiative field of the Earth is modelled based on satellite measurements collected in the cloud and Earth radiant energy system (CERES) database. To enrich the fidelity of the outputs, a thermal sensor model and the corresponding noise levels are introduced in the pipeline. The generated images are then used to test the performance of traditional object detection algorithms in discerning the region of interest (ROI) under different orbital scenarios. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the selected methodologies in mitigating the influence of the Earth in the ROI extraction process, while also revealing a performance degradation due to the presence of multi-material targets.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":44971,"journal":{"name":"Acta Astronautica","volume":"226 ","pages":"Pages 611-625"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142660951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Machine learning-based classification for Single Photon Space Debris Light Curves","authors":"Nadine M. Trummer,&nbsp;Amit Reza,&nbsp;Michael A. Steindorfer,&nbsp;Christiane Helling","doi":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.10.066","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.10.066","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The growing number of man-made debris in Earth’s orbit poses a threat to active satellite missions due to the risk of collision. Characterizing unknown debris is, therefore, of high interest. Light Curves (LCs) are temporal variations of object brightness and have been shown to contain information such as shape, attitude, and rotational state. Since 2015, the Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) group of Space Research Institute (IWF) Graz has been building a space debris LC catalogue. The LCs are captured on a Single Photon basis, which sets them apart from CCD-based measurements. In recent years, Machine Learning (ML) models have emerged as a viable technique for analysing LCs. This work aims to classify Single Photon Space Debris LCs using the ML framework. We have explored LC classification using k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN), Random Forest (RDF), XGBoost (XGB), and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) classifiers in order to assess the difference in performance between traditional and deep models. Instead of performing classification on the direct LC data, we extracted features from the data first using an automated pipeline. We apply our models on three tasks, which are classifying individual objects, objects grouped into families according to origin, and grouping into general types. We successfully classified Space Debris LCs captured on Single Photon basis, obtaining accuracies as high as 90.7%. Further, our experiments show that the classifiers provide better classification accuracy with automated extracted features than other methods.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":44971,"journal":{"name":"Acta Astronautica","volume":"226 ","pages":"Pages 542-554"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142592792","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}