This paper develops an observing strategy for space missions performing all-sky surveys, where a single spacecraft maps the celestial sphere subject to realistic constraints. The strategy is flexible, accommodates targeted observations of specific areas of the sky, and achieves the desired trade-off between survey goals. This paper focuses on missions operating in low Earth orbit with interacti...

structures, even though there is a progressive more correct approximation with each subsequent model. Were we to decide that a more complicated figure should be invoked to model it, we would have to come up with a different shape. Of course, for many of our purposes of description and explanation, treating the Earth like a sphere works quite well (say, if we want to calculate the diameter of ou...

Exact general relativistic observation equations for the GAIA concept were derived for a static sphere, i.e., with only stellar angular coordinates as un-knowns. These equations were then put to test in an end-to-end simulation of the current baseline mission. Although the applicability of the present model is limited to the case of an observer in the gravita-tional well of a spherical non-rota...

Using a mobile photothermal probe we show that it is possible to detect rapidly different type of cracks (emerging ones or not), their width being a few micrometers and their depth being some hundredths of micrometers.

We present a method to optimize the orientation of directional sensors and instruments in a vehicle body-fixed frame. This technique can be used in spacecraft design to maximize the performance of directional sensors and instruments. The optimization formulation consists of using the attitude sphere to create directions over which to optimize and deriving an objective function that uses these d...

We study a simple model for an asteroid pair, namely a planar system consisting of a rigid body and a sphere. This model is interesting because it is one of the simplest that captures the coupling between rotational and translational dynamics. By assuming that the binary is in a relative equilibria of the system, we construct a model for the motion of a spacecraft about this asteroid pair witho...

Three problems for the interaction between N bodies to which exact solutions were obtained are discussed. In the first problem, the bodies are located axisymmetrically in a plane. Possible trajectories of the bodies here are ellipses, parabolas, hyperbolas, or straight lines. Results of solving this problem are further used for solving problems about Earth’s rotation and Mercury’s perihelion. I...