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Interplanetary spaceflight or interplanetary travel is the crewed or uncrewed travel between stars and planets, usually within a single planetary system. In practice, spaceflights of this type are confined to travel between the planets of the Solar System. Uncrewed space probes have flown to all the observed planets in the Solar System as well as to dwarf planets Pluto and Ceres, and several asteroids. Orbiters and landers return more information than fly-by missions. Crewed flights have landed on the Moon and have been planned, from time to time, for Mars, Venus and Mercury. While many scientists appreciate the knowledge value that uncrewed flights provide, the value of crewed missions is more controversial. Science fiction writers propose a number of benefits, including the mining of asteroids, access to solar power, and room for colonization in the event of an Earth catastrophe.
In celestial mechanics, the Lagrange points are points of equilibrium for small-mass objects under the gravitational influence of two massive orbiting bodies. Mathematically, this involves the solution of the restricted three-body problem.
Spacecraft propulsion is any method used to accelerate spacecraft and artificial satellites. In-space propulsion exclusively deals with propulsion systems used in the vacuum of space and should not be confused with space launch or atmospheric entry.
Solar sails are a method of spacecraft propulsion using radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large surfaces. A number of spaceflight missions to test solar propulsion and navigation have been proposed since the 1980s. The first spacecraft to make use of the technology was IKAROS, launched in 2010.
Starwisp is a hypothetical unmanned interstellar probe design proposed by the late Robert L. Forward. It is propelled by a microwave sail, similar to a solar sail in concept, but powered by microwaves from a human-made source. It would fly through the target system without slowing down.
The Interplanetary Transport Network (ITN) is a collection of gravitationally determined pathways through the Solar System that require very little energy for an object to follow. The ITN makes particular use of Lagrange points as locations where trajectories through space can be redirected using little or no energy. These points have the peculiar property of allowing objects to orbit around them, despite lacking an object to orbit. While it would use little energy, transport along the network would take a long time.
In astrodynamics, orbital station-keeping is keeping a spacecraft at a fixed distance from another spacecraft or celestial body. It requires a series of orbital maneuvers made with thruster burns to keep the active craft in the same orbit as its target. For many low Earth orbit satellites, the effects of non-Keplerian forces, i.e. the deviations of the gravitational force of the Earth from that of a homogeneous sphere, gravitational forces from Sun/Moon, solar radiation pressure and air drag, must be counteracted.
A megastructure is a very large artificial object, although the limits of precisely how large vary considerably. Some apply the term to any especially large or tall building. Some sources define a megastructure as an enormous self-supporting artificial construct. The products of megascale engineering or astroengineering are megastructures.
Stellar engines are a class of hypothetical megastructures which use the resources of a star to generate available work. For instance, they can use the energy of the star to produce mechanical, electrical or chemical work or they can use the impulse of the light emitted by the star to produce thrust, able to control the motion of a star system. The concept has been introduced by Bădescu and Cathcart. The variants which produce thrust may accelerate a star and anything orbiting it in a given direction. The creation of such a system would make its builders a type-II civilization on the Kardashev scale.
In astronomy and spaceflight, a lunar orbit is an orbit of an object around Earth's Moon. In general these orbits are not circular. When farthest from the Moon a spacecraft is said to be at apolune, apocynthion, or aposelene. When closest to the Moon it is said to be at perilune, pericynthion, or periselene. These derive from names or epithets of the moon goddess.
A halo orbit is a periodic, three-dimensional orbit associated with one of the L1, L2 or L3 Lagrange points in the three-body problem of orbital mechanics. Although a Lagrange point is just a point in empty space, its peculiar characteristic is that it can be orbited by a Lissajous orbit or by a halo orbit. These can be thought of as resulting from an interaction between the gravitational pull of the two planetary bodies and the Coriolis and centrifugal force on a spacecraft. Halo orbits exist in any three-body system, e.g., a Sun–Earth–orbiting satellite system or an Earth–Moon–orbiting satellite system. Continuous "families" of both northern and southern halo orbits exist at each Lagrange point. Because halo orbits tend to be unstable, station-keeping using thrusters may be required to keep a satellite on the orbit.
Colin Robert McInnes is a Scottish engineer known for his work in solar sails. He is currently one of the leading figures in the field, being the author of over 50 solar sail papers since 2001. He also wrote a book on the subject, Solar Sailing: Technology, Dynamics and Mission Applications, which is commonly referenced in solar sail journal papers.
Aditya-L1 is a coronagraphy spacecraft for studying the solar atmosphere, designed and developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and various other Indian Space Research Institutes. It is orbiting at about 1.5 million km from Earth in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) between the Earth and the Sun, where it will study the solar atmosphere, solar magnetic storms, and their impact on the environment around the Earth.
A Bishop Ring is a type of hypothetical rotating space habitat originally proposed in 1997 by Forrest Bishop of the Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering. The concept is a smaller scale version of the Banks Orbital, which itself is a smaller version of the Niven ring. Like other space habitat designs, the Bishop Ring would spin to produce artificial gravity by way of centrifugal force. The design differs from the classical designs produced in the 1970s by Gerard K. O'Neill and NASA in that it would use carbon nanotubes instead of steel, allowing the habitat to be built much larger. In the original proposal, the habitat would be approximately 1,000 km (620 mi) in radius and 500 km (310 mi) in width, containing 3 million square kilometers of living space, comparable to the area of Argentina or India.
Engineering on an astronomical scale, or astronomical engineering, i.e., engineering involving operations with whole astronomical objects, is a known theme in science fiction, as well as a matter of recent scientific research and exploratory engineering.
Hypothetical technology is technology that does not exist yet, but that could exist in the future. This article presents examples of technologies that have been hypothesized or proposed, but that have not been developed yet. An example of hypothetical technology is teleportation.
A distant retrograde orbit (DRO), as most commonly conceived, is a spacecraft orbit around a moon that is highly stable because of its interactions with two Lagrange points (L1 and L2) of the planet–moon system.
EQUULEUS is a nanosatellite of the 6U CubeSat format that will measure the distribution of plasma that surrounds the Earth (plasmasphere) to help scientists understand the radiation environment in that region. It will also demonstrate low-thrust trajectory control techniques, such as multiple lunar flybys, within the Earth-Moon region using water steam as propellant. The spacecraft was designed and developed jointly by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the University of Tokyo.
CubeSail is a low-cost spacecraft propulsion demonstration mission using two identical 1.5U CubeSat satellites to deploy a 260 m (850 ft) long, 20 m2 (220 sq ft) solar sail ribbon between them. This mission is a first in a series of increasingly complex demonstrations leading up to a full-scale UltraSail heliogyro by the University of Illinois and CU Aerospace.
References
- ↑ USpatent 5183225,Robert L. Forward&Forward,"Statite: Spacecraft That Utilizes Light Pressure and Method of Use",issued 1993-02-02
- ↑ McInnes, C. R. and Simmons, J. F. L.: "Halo Orbits for Solar Sails—Dynamics and Applications", ESA Journal, Vol. 13, 1989, pp. 229-234
- ↑ Geostorm
- ↑ Mulligan, Patricia (August 1998). "Solar Sails for the Operational Space Community". Spaceviews. 8 (3–4).
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