<p dir="ltr">Tracking and characterizing the space debris population in Earth orbit is necessary to ensure that space can continue to be used safely. However, because space objects are affected by non-conservative forces like drag and solar radiation pressure, predicting the long-term evolution of their orbits is impossible without knowledge of their attitude profiles. Such knowledge may be unavailable for inactive satellites or objects of which the observer is not the owner or operator. In many cases, attitude cannot be measured directly because resolved images of space objects are unavailable due to the distance between the object and the observer, and the effects of atmospheric seeing. However, the total brightness of objects can still be measured. A set of brightness measurements over time is referred to as a "light curve.'' An object's observed brightness is influenced by its attitude and other factors such as its orbit, shape, and reflective properties. If some of these other factors are known, attitude information may be extracted from a light curve. Existing methods of solving this attitude inversion problem either require a good initial guess for an object's rotational states or do not provide a full state estimate. The work in this thesis avoids both problems and provides a full state estimate without requiring an initial state guess.</p><p><br></p><p dir="ltr">The attitude estimation process assumes that the observation geometry and the observed object's shape, reflection properties, and inertia tensor are known. In this thesis, an initial method of searching for attitudes that could correspond to each measurement using the viewing sphere is described. These possible attitudes or "pseudo-measurements'' are then used to initialize a probability hypothesis density filter that is theoretically capable of representing the multi-modal nature of the attitude estimate using a Gaussian mixture model. However, the probability hypothesis density filter is found to often diverge from the truth because it is necessary to merge and prune components of the Gaussian mixture model to avoid computational intractability. In its place, a particle swarm optimizer method for performing an attitude inversion has been developed. This method uses analytic attitude solutions to quickly propagate a large number of attitude time histories simultaneously. The particle swarm optimizer method is validated using simulated light curves for several objects. A preliminary attempt is made to estimate the attitude of an object using real light curve measurements.</p>

Thermal control in spacecraft will be increasingly important as the spacecraft grows smaller and more compact. Such spacecraft with low thermal mass will have to be designed to retain or reject heat more efficiently. The passive smart radiation device (SRD) is a new type of thermal control material for spacecraft. Current space thermal control systems require heaters with an additional power penalty to maintain spacecraft temperatures during cold swings. Because its emissivity can be changed without electrical instruments or mechanical part, the use of SRD decreases the request of spacecraft power budget. The (SRD) based on VO2 films is one of the most important structures of the functional thermal control surface, being lighter, more advanced and without a moving devices. A large portion of the heat exchange between an object in space and the environment is performed throughout radiation, which is in turn determined by the object surface properties. The modulation device is coated on the spacecraft surface and thus provides a thermal window that can adapt to the changing conditions in orbit. VO2 is well known to have a temperature driven metal to insulator transition ≈ 68ᴼC accompanying a transformation of crystallographic structure, from monoclinic (M-phase, semiconductor) at temperature below 68ᴼC to tetragonal (R-phase, metal) at temperature above 68ᴼC. This transition temperature is accompanied by an increase of infrared reflectivity and a decrease of infrared emissivity with increasing temperature. This flexibility makes VO2 potentially interesting for optical, electrical, and electro-optical switches devices, and as window for energy efficiency buildings applications. This study reports on effect of thickness on VO2 as well as the effect of proton irradiation on VO2 for active smart radiation device (SRD) application. VO2 was deposited on mica by Pulsed laser deposition techniques. The thickness of the film was varied by varying the deposition time. To characterize VO2 the following techniques were performed: XRD, AFM, SEM, TEM, XPS, RBS, RAMAN and transport measurements for optical properties. The effect of proton irradiation was observed using the SEM, where the change in structure, from crystal grains to rods, was observed. / Physics / M.Sc. (Physics)

Thermal control in spacecraft will be increasingly important as the spacecraft grows smaller and more compact. Such spacecraft with low thermal mass will have to be designed to retain or reject heat more efficiently. The passive smart radiation device (SRD) is a new type of thermal control material for spacecraft. Current space thermal control systems require heaters with an additional power penalty to maintain spacecraft temperatures during cold swings. Because its emissivity can be changed without electrical instruments or mechanical part, the use of SRD decreases the request of spacecraft power budget. The (SRD) based on VO2 films is one of the most important structures of the functional thermal control surface, being lighter, more advanced and without a moving devices. A large portion of the heat exchange between an object in space and the environment is performed throughout radiation, which is in turn determined by the object surface properties. The modulation device is coated on the spacecraft surface and thus provides a thermal window that can adapt to the changing conditions in orbit. VO2 is well known to have a temperature driven metal to insulator transition ≈ 68ᴼC accompanying a transformation of crystallographic structure, from monoclinic (M-phase, semiconductor) at temperature below 68ᴼC to tetragonal (R-phase, metal) at temperature above 68ᴼC. This transition temperature is accompanied by an increase of infrared reflectivity and a decrease of infrared emissivity with increasing temperature. This flexibility makes VO2 potentially interesting for optical, electrical, and electro-optical switches devices, and as window for energy efficiency buildings applications. This study reports on effect of thickness on VO2 as well as the effect of proton irradiation on VO2 for active smart radiation device (SRD) application. VO2 was deposited on mica by Pulsed laser deposition techniques. The thickness of the film was varied by varying the deposition time. To characterize VO2 the following techniques were performed: XRD, AFM, SEM, TEM, XPS, RBS, RAMAN and transport measurements for optical properties. The effect of proton irradiation was observed using the SEM, where the change in structure, from crystal grains to rods, was observed. / Physics / M.Sc. (Physics)

<p> </p> <p>In the coming decades, numerous missions plan to exploit multi-body orbits for operations. Given the complex nature of multi-body systems, trajectory designers must possess effective tools that leverage aspects of the dynamical environment to streamline the design process and enable these missions. In this investigation, a particular class of dynamical structures, quasi-periodic orbits, are examined. This work summarizes a computational framework to construct quasi-periodic orbits and a design framework to leverage quasi-periodic motion within the path planning process. First, quasi-periodic orbit computation in the Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem (CR3BP) and the Bicircular Restricted Four-Body Problem (BCR4BP) is summarized. The CR3BP and BCR4BP serve as preliminary models to capture fundamental motion that is leveraged for end-to-end designs. Additionally, the relationship between the Earth-Moon CR3BP and the BCR4BP is explored to provide insight into the effect of solar acceleration on multi-body structures in the lunar vicinity. Characterization of families of quasi-periodic orbits in the CR3BP and BCR4BP is also summarized. Families of quasi-periodic orbits prove to be particularly insightful in the BCR4BP, where periodic orbits only exist as isolated solutions. Computation of three-dimensional quasi-periodic tori is also summarized to demonstrate the extensibility of the computational framework to higher-dimensional quasi-periodic orbits. Lastly, a design framework to incorporate quasi-periodic orbits into the trajectory design process is demonstrated through a series of applications. First, several applications were examined for transfer design in the vicinity of the Moon. The first application leverages a single quasi-periodic trajectory arc as an initial guess to transfer between two periodic orbits. Next, several quasi-periodic arcs are leveraged to construct transfer between a planar periodic orbit and a spatial periodic orbit. Lastly, transfers between two quasi-periodic orbits are demonstrated by leveraging heteroclinic connections between orbits at the same energy. These transfer applications are all constructed in the CR3BP and validated in a higher-fidelity ephemeris model to ensure the geometry persists. Applications to ballistic lunar transfers are also constructed by leveraging quasi-periodic motion in the BCR4BP. Stable manifold trajectories of four-body quasi-periodic orbits supply an initial guess to generate families of ballistic lunar transfers to a single quasi-periodic orbit. Poincare mapping techniques are used to isolate transfer solutions that possess a low time of flight or an outbound lunar flyby. Additionally, impulsive maneuvers are introduced to expand the solution space. This strategy is extended to additional orbits in a single family to demonstrate "corridors" of transfers exist to reach a type of destination motion. To ensure these transfers exist in a higher fidelity model, several solutions are transitioned to a Sun-Earth-Moon ephemeris model using a differential corrections process to show that the geometries persist.</p>

This paper describes the changes made from Cal Poly’s initial railgun system, the Mk. 1 railgun, to the Mk. 1.1 system, as well as the design, fabrication, and testing of a newer and larger Mk. 2 railgun system. The Mk. 1.1 system is developed as a more efficient alteration of the original Mk. 1 system, but is found to be defective due to hardware deficiencies and failure, as well as unforeseen efficiency losses. A Mk. 2 system is developed and built around donated hardware from the Naval Postgraduate School. The Mk. 2 system strove to implement an efficient, augmented, electromagnetic railgun and projectile system capable of firing an approximate 1g aluminum projectile to speeds exceeding 2 km/s. A novel three part projectile is proposed to mitigate rail and projectile degradation. Projectile and sabot system kinematic equations are derived and the projectile is designed and tested along with Mk. 2 barrel. A numerical electromechanical model is developed to predict the performance of the Mk. 2 system and projectile assembly, and predicts a final velocity for the fabricated system exceeding 3.5 km/s and an efficiency as high as 24%. Testing of the Mk. 2 system showed catastrophic failure of the projectile during initial acceleration, resulting in very short acceleration times and distance, low velocity projectiles, and low efficiencies. During further testing of various projectile configurations, the barrel structure failed due to a large internal arc. Future work for the Mk. 2 system is discussed, a revised external barrel structure suggested, and a solid, more conventional solid chevron projectile design suggested.

Collision with orbital debris poses a serious threat to spacecraft and astronauts. Hypervelocity impacts resulting from collisions mean that objects with a mass less than 1g can cause mission-ending damage to spacecraft. A means of shielding spacecraft against collisions is necessary. A means of testing candidate shielding methods for their efficacy in mitigating hypervelocity impacts is therefore also necessary. Cal Poly’s Electromagnetic Railgun was designed with the goal of creating a laboratory system capable of simulating hypervelocity (≥ 3 km/s) impacts. Due to several factors, the system was not previously capable of high-velocity (≥ 1 km/s) tests. A deficient projectile design is revised, and a new design is tested. The new projectile design is demonstrated to enable far greater performance than the previous design, with a muzzle velocity ≥ 1 km/sbeing verified during testing, and an energy conversion efficiency of 2.7%. A method of improving contact and controlling wear at the projectile/rail interface using silver plating and conductive silver paste is validated. A mechanism explaining the problem of internal arcing within the railgun barrel is proposed, and design recommendations are made to eliminate arcing on the basis of the work done during testing. The primary structural members are found to be deficient for their application and a failure analysis of a failed member, loading analysis of the railgun barrel, and design of new structures is undertaken and presented.

This thesis presents an autonomous vision-based navigation strategy applicable to the approach phase of a small body mission, developed within the Robotics Section at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Today, the operations performed to approach small planetary bodies are largely dependent on ground support and human decision-making, which demand operational complexity and restrict the spectrum of achievable activities throughout the mission. In contrast, the autonomous pipeline presented here could be run onboard, without ground intervention. Using optical data only, the pipeline estimates the target body's rotation, pole, shape, and performs identification and tracking of surface landmarks, for terrain relative navigation. An end-to-end simulation is performed to validate the pipeline, starting from input synthetic images and ending with an orbit determination solution. As a case study, the approach phase of the Rosetta mission is reproduced, and it is concluded that navigation performance is in line with the ground-based state-of-the-art. Such results are presented in detail in the paper attached in the appendix, which presents the pipeline architecture and navigation analysis. This thesis manuscript aims to provide additional context to the appended paper, further describing some implementation details used for the approach simulations. / Detta examensarbete presenterar en strategi för ett autonomt visionsbaserat navigationssystem för att närma sig en liten himlakropp. Strategin har utvecklats av robotikavdelningen vid NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory i USA. Nuvarande system som används för att närma sig en liten himlakropp bygger till största delen på markstationer och mänskligt beslutsfattande, vilka utgör komplexa rutiner och begränsar spektrumet av möjliga aktiviteter under rymduppdraget. I jämförelse, det autonoma system presenterat i denna rapport är utformat för att köras helt från rymdfarkosten och utan krav på kontakt med markstationer. Genom att använda enbart optisk information uppskattar systemet himlakroppens rotation, poler och form samt genomför en identifiering och spårning av landmärken på himlakroppens yta för relativ terrängnavigering. En simulering har genomförts för att validera det autonoma navigationssystemet. Simuleringen utgick ifrån bilder av himlakroppen och avslutades med en lösning på banbestämningsproblemet. Fasen då rymdfarkosten i ESA:s Rosetta-rymduppdrag närmar sig kometen valdes som fallstudie för simuleringen och slutsatsen från denna fallstudie var att systemets autonoma navigationsprestanda var i linje med toppmoderna system. Den detaljerade beskrivningen av det autonoma systemet och resultaten från studien har presenterats i ett konferensbidrag, som ingår som bilaga till rapporten. Inledningen av rapporten syftar till att förtydliga bakgrunden och implementering som komplement till innehållet i bilagan.

<p dir="ltr">Within the aerospace community in recent years, there has been a marked increase in interest in cislunar space. To this end, the study of the dynamics of this regime has flourished in both quantity and quality in recent years, spearheaded by the use of simplified dynamical models to gain insight into the dynamics and to generate viable mission concepts. The most popular and simple of these models, the Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem, has been thoroughly explored to meet these goals (even well-prior to the recent spike in interest). Much work has been done investigating periodic orbits within these models, and similarly has been performed on non-periodic transfers into periodic orbits. Studied less is the superposition of these two concepts, or using periodic orbits as a way to transit, for example, cislunar space. In this thesis, the development of periodic orbits amenable to transiting is accomplished. Beginning from periodic orbit families already present in the literature, this research finds a novel and useful family of periodic orbits, here dubbed the spatial 2:1-resonant orbit family. Within this newly-discovered family, multitudes of qualitative behaviors interesting to the astrodynamics community are found. Many family members seem accommadating to a diverse set of mission profiles, from purely-unstable family members best suited to use as transfers, to marginally stable ones best suited to longer-term use. This family as a whole is analyzed and catalogued with thorough descriptions of behavior, both quantitative and qualitative. While the Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem serves as an excellent starting point for analysis, trajectories found there must be generalized to higher-fidelity modeling. In this spirit, this thesis also focuses on demonstrating such generalization and putting it into practice using the more sophisticated Elliptic-Restricted Three-Body Problem. Documentation of the numerical tools necessary and helpful in accomplishing this generalization is included in this work. Prototypically, the truly 2:1 sidereally-resonant unstable member of the 2:1 family is transitioned into the elliptic problem, as is a nearly-stable L2 Halo orbit family member. This new trajectory is paired with a more classically-present example to show the validity of the methodology. To aid this analysis, symmetries present within the elliptic model are also explored and explained. With this analysis completed, this orbit family is demonstrated to be both interesting and useful, when considered under even more realistic modelling. Further work to mature this novel family of orbits is merited, both for use as the fundamental building block for transfers and for use for more-permanent habitation. More broadly, this work aims to achieve a further proliferation of the merger between transfer and orbit, concepts which seem distinct at first, but deserve more gradual consideration as different flavors of the same idea.</p>

<p dir="ltr"> With NASA's Artemis program and international collaborations focused on building a sustainable infrastructure for human exploration of the Moon, there is a growing demand for lunar exploration and complex spaceflight operations in cislunar space. However, designing efficient transfer trajectories between the Earth and the Moon remains complex and challenging. This investigation focuses on developing a dynamically informed framework for constructing low-energy transfers in the Earth-Moon-Sun Bicircular Restricted Four-body Problem (BCR4BP). Techniques within dynamical systems theory and numerical methods are exploited to construct transfers to various cislunar orbits. The analysis aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamical structures governing spacecraft motion. It addresses the characteristics of dynamical structures that facilitate the construction of propellant-efficient pathways between the Earth and the Moon, exploring periodic structures and energy properties from the Circular Restricted Three-body Problem (CR3BP) and BCR4BP. The investigation also focuses on constructing families of low-energy transfers by incorporating electric propulsion, i.e., low thrust, in an effort to reduce the time of flight and offer alternative transfer geometries. Additionally, the investigation introduces a process to transition solutions to the higher fidelity ephemeris force model to accurately model spacecraft motion through the Earth-Moon-Sun system. This research provides insights into constructing families of ballistic lunar transfers (BLTs) and cislunar low-energy flight paths (CLEFs), offering a foundation for future mission design and exploration of the Earth-Moon system.</p>

<p dir="ltr">This thesis aims to assess the efficacy of adaptive Gaussian mixture filtering for an inertial navigation-based cislunar application. The thesis focuses on a fully autonomous system, where the navigation system is solely reliant on onboard sensors and receives no navigation information from external tracking systems. The proposed adaptive filter is tested under non-ideal conditions. Specifically, this thesis considers the challenging case where range information is unavailable, and instead, only bearings angles with respect to illuminated celestial bodies are measured. The performance of the adaptive filter is compared to the unscented Kalman filter (UKF), and the filter consistency and errors are compared. The proposed filter addresses challenges in linearization errors that accrue in the UKF measurement update equations. The adaptive filter is shown to be a consistent estimator, significantly outperforming the UKF. Considering design requirements for similar navigation missions, recommendations and practical considerations are suggested for future cislunar autonomous navigation applications</p>