Ceres In 2006, the International Astronautical Federation formally defined both planets and dwarf planets. “A “dwarf planet” is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (c) has not cleared the…
Earlier last week I was talking to one of my undergrads about the different subspecialties in astrodynamics and I’ve decided to distill that conversation into the following blogpost. Trajectory Design The best-known sub-specialty of astrodynamics, and the one that I’m in, is trajectory design. We answer questions like how do we get from Earth to…
A while ago I set up SpaceBot, a twitter bot designed to post about space. In the meantime, I’ve rolled out some upgrades to it. Here they are, What Happened in Deep Space Today By looking at Jonathan McDowell’s deep space catalog, SpaceBot now posts a random event that happened that day in deep space…
Introduction NOTE: This is a very graphics-heavy post and may take some time to load. Lagrange points are those points in the three-body system where the tug of gravity from the two primary bodies cancel out and any spacecraft stays in the same relative position with the two primary bodies. If you are in the rotating…
Does your Twitter feed not have enough space in it? Introducing Space Bot A new twitter bot dedicated to all things space. What Space Bot Does So Far Plots ground tracks for random objects in space Shows the two objects likeliest to collied that day, as well as when their closest approach will be. Note:…
Last week in my lab’s journal club I was presenting on two white papers detailing the reasoning for possible missions to explore the outer solar system. These papers are part of the Astro2020 decadal survey, and I figured I would share some thoughts on them here. As both papers are short (<10 pages each) and…
A few weeks ago I attended the 2019 AAS/AIAA Astrodynamics Specialists Conference (ASC). This was my first major academic conference in grad school and I was there presenting on my research on using neural networks for optimal control with a special focus on their resilience to missed thrust events. Where Was I? The Astrodynamics Specialist…
Space is Hard From ionizing radiation to micrometeoroids, space is a dangerous place. Most spacecraft, when they feel threatened, can autonomously enter into a protective operating mode call safe mode. Different spacecraft do different things in safe mode, but most turn off all non-essential components, like propulsion and the payload, to focus all energy on…
A Quick Estimate A few days ago I was invited to take part in a mock architecture study looking at Deep Space CubeSat missions. As a multi-body dynamics fanboy, my heart jumped at the possibility of using the interplanetary superhighway to preserve our meager delta-V budget. The downside of using the interplanetary superhighway is that…
Space Debris From dead satellites to flecks of paint, there are over 500,000 pieces of space debris currently being tracked. Space debris, and the problems they can cause is a hot topic with everything from a major Hollywood movie to TED talks being given about them. In this post I’m going to go over a less…
