As small celestial body exploration advances, higher requirements with regard to system
safety and landing precision are proposed for future landing and sample return missions …

The OSIRIS-REx mission will conduct a Radio Science investigation of the asteroid Bennu
with a primary goal of estimating the mass and gravity field of the asteroid. The spacecraft …

Recent advances in the characterization of small body surfaces with stereophotoclinometry
are discussed. The principal data output is an ensemble of landmark maps (L‐maps), high …

Space missions to small solar system bodies such as asteroids and comets must deal with
multiple perturbations acting on the spacecraft. These include strong perturbations from the …

Small solar system bodies such as asteroids and comets are of significant interest for both
scientific and human exploration missions. However, their orbital environments are among …

Solar sail spacecraft are proposed to accomplish body-fixed hovering missions over
elongated asteroids. The body-fixed hovering flight is to maintain a fixed position relative to …

The characteristics of the interior gravity field are derived, summarized, and evaluated near
the surface of an asteroid for the purpose of small body proximity operations. In order to …

Hayabusa was the first asteroid sample return mission. It was launched in May 2003, and
arrived at the target asteroid (25143) Itokawa in September 2005. The mission enabled us to …

The regolith-covered surfaces of asteroids preserve records of geophysical processes that
have occurred both at their surfaces and sometimes also in their interiors. As a result of the …

An orbit–attitude, direct model reference adaptive control methodology is developed and
applied to spacecraft trajectory tracking in the vicinity of asteroid with dynamical coupling …