An asteroid’s size, shape, and rotational speed are clues to its internal properties and potential resources for mining operations. However, of the more than 20,000 near-Earth asteroids currently known, only a tiny fraction have been sufficiently characterized to estimate those three properties accurately. That is essentially a resource constraint – there aren’t enough dedicated telescopes on Earth to keep track of all the asteroids for long enough to characterize them, and deep space resources, such as the Deep Space Network required for communications outside Earth’s orbit, are already overutilized by other missions. Enter the Autonomous Nanosatellite Swarming (ANS) mission concept, developed by Dr. Simone D’Amico and his colleagues at Stanford’s Space Rendezvous Laboratory.  The concept behind ANS is relatively simple. A primary “mothership” spacecraft travels to an asteroid, where it deploys several smaller, autonomous nanosatellites upon arrival. These nanosatellites take up positions surrounding the asteroid and, using relatively inexpensive sensor and communications technology, map the asteroid’s features. After observing for some time, they send data back to the mothership, where an algorithm pieces together information similar to a stereo vision system on Earth and calculates the asteroid’s shape, size, and rotational speed. There are several deeper layers to unpack in the mission, though. Communication is the first one. In ANS, only the mothership communicates back to Earth using a high-gain antenna. The smaller swarming robots all communicate with each other – partly to estimate distances between the different swarming satellites but also to coordinate observations. Characterization is the first step toward exploitation, as Fraser discusses. Each nanosatellite utilizes only a few relatively inexpensive pieces of hardware, including a star tracker for overall positioning, short range camera (as compared to more expensive lidar systems typically used in asteroid characterization missions), atomic clocks to synchronize timing, and radio frequency communication modules. These components allow for relatively independent operation of each nanosatellite and lower the burden of communication back with Earth – freeing up those deep space communications resources for other critical work. But the critical component of ANS isn’t so much the hardware—it’s the software, particularly the control and estimation algorithm. Dr. D’Amico and his team describe a technical tool known as an unscented Kalman filter, which allows them to estimate asteroid shape, size, and rotation based on landmarks noticed by each swarming nanosatellite and run through this algorithm. To demonstrate the effectiveness of that algorithm, the team tested it using a relatively well-characterized asteroid: 443 Eros. That asteroid had the distinction of being both the first near-Earth object ever found, back in 1898, and the first ever visited by a mission – the NEAR mission 100 years later. The NEAR Shoemaker craft that visited 433 Eros also successfully landed on it, another first for humanity. Even with the comparatively simple sensing technology of a quarter century ago, Eros is still one of the most characterized asteroids in the solar system. Here’s a talk about autonomous swarming given by Dr. D’Amico, the head of Stanford’s Space Rendezvous Lab. The demonstration results clearly showed that the ANS algorithm does its job well. It can coordinate the positioning of the nanosatellites surrounding the asteroid and coalesce their disparate data sets into a coherent picture of the asteroid they are monitoring. And it can do so remotely, with very minimal input from Earth. For now, that is how far the algorithm has gotten. Several missions, some of which we’ll cover in the near future, further explore the idea of nanosatellite swarms. But ANS itself hasn’t yet been adopted into a formal mission architecture. One day, though, thousands of satellites might be swarming the tens of thousands of small bodies surrounding our home, leading to the first stages of a genuinely off-Earth economy. Learn More:NASA – Autonomous Nanosatellite Swarming (ANS) Using Radio Frequency and Optical NavigationStacey, Dennison, & D’Amico – Autonomous Asteroid Characterization through Nanosatellite SwarmingUT – What Are Asteroids Made Of?UT – Water Found on the Surface of an Asteroid Lead Image:Artist’ depiction of an ANS mission to Eros.Credit – Stacey, Dennison, & D’Amico The post Swarming Satellites Could Autonomous Characterize an Asteroid appeared first on Universe Today.

Bringing victims' final struggles to life.

"The American people deserve answers from the Secret Service." - Marsha Blackburn

He inspired the 1984 song "I Can’t Drive 55."

In February, the UK government published a policy paper about the action the government is taking to adapt the UK to climate change.  And last month the UK government was offering a […]

BREAKING?? A company called Austin Private Wealth LLC shorted 12,000,000 shares of $DJT via a put option. The filing date is July 12th, the day before the assassination attempt. They have around $1 Billion in assets under management and this is by far the largest put placed.… pic.twitter.com/9ZehBexdFK — Champagne Joshi (@JoshWalkos) July 17, 2024

by Brian Shilhavy, Health Impact News: Something that I predicted would one day come true is actually happening today, here in the summer of 2024. Due to the complexities of the food supply chain here in the U.S. that brings mass-produced cheap beef from mega-farms where cattle are raised in confined feeding operations (CAFOs) on […]

by Frank Bergman, Slay News: The co-author of World Economic Forum (WEF) founder Klaus Schwab’s “COVID-19: The Great Reset” has blown the whistle on the inner workings of the globalist organization. Thierry Malleret, who wrote “The Great Reset” with Schwab in 2020, has just released a new exposé titled “Deaths at Davos.” The new book […]

from Paul Joseph Watson: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/