PV has traditionally been used for electric power in space. Solar panels on spacecraft are usually the sole source of power to run the sensors, active heating and cooling, and communications. Photovoltaics for Space: Key Issues, Missions and Alternative Technologies provides an overview of the challenges to efficiently produce solar power in near-Earth space and beyond: the materials and device architectures that have been developed to surmount these environmental and mission-specific barriers. The book is organized in four sections consisting of detailed introductory and background content as well as a collection of in-depth space environment, materials processing, technology, and mission overviews by international experts. This book will detail how to design and optimize a space power system's performance for power-to-weight ratio, effectiveness at end of operational life (EOL) compared to beginning of operational life (BOL), and specific mission objectives and goals. This book outlines the knowledge required for practitioners and advanced students interested in learning about the background, materials, devices, environmental challenges, missions, and future for photovoltaics for space exploration.

Attitude Dynamics and Control of Space Debris During Ion Beam Transportation provides an overview of the cutting-edge research around the topic of contactless ion beam transportation for the removal of space debris. This practical guide covers topics such as space debris attitude motion, the motion of rigid materials in an inhomogeneous high-speed rarefied medium, gravity gradient torque, and more. The book examines and compares the various ways to control the spatial motion of space debris, such as engine thrust or altering the direction of the ion beam axis, and offers simple mathematical models for analyzing system behaviors.

Design of Control Laws and State Observers for Fixed-Wing UAVs: Simulation and Experimental Approaches provides readers with modeling techniques, simulations, and results from real-time experiments using linear and nonlinear controllers and state observers. The book starts with an overview of the history of UAVs and the equations of motion applied to them. Following chapters analyze linear and nonlinear controllers, state observers, and the book concludes with a chapter discussing testbed development and experimental results, equipping readers with the knowledge they need to conduct their own stable UAV flights whether in simulation or real-time.

Modern Spacecraft Guidance, Navigation, and Control: From System Modeling to AI and Innovative Applications provides a comprehensive foundation of theory and applications of spacecraft GNC, from fundamentals to advanced concepts, including modern AI-based architectures with focus on hardware and software practical applications. Divided into four parts, this book begins with an introduction to spacecraft GNC, before discussing the basic tools for GNC applications. These include an overview of the main reference systems and planetary models, a description of the space environment, an introduction to orbital and attitude dynamics, and a survey on spacecraft sensors and actuators, with details of their modeling principles. Part 2 covers guidance, navigation, and control, including both on-board and ground-based methods. It also discusses classical and novel control techniques, failure detection isolation and recovery (FDIR) methodologies, GNC verification, validation, and on-board implementation. The final part 3 discusses AI and modern applications featuring different applicative scenarios, with particular attention on artificial intelligence and the possible benefits when applied to spacecraft GNC. In this part, GNC for small satellites and CubeSats is also discussed. Modern Spacecraft Guidance, Navigation, and Control: From System Modeling to AI and Innovative Applications is a valuable resource for aerospace engineers, GNC/AOCS engineers, avionic developers, and AIV/AIT technicians.

Aerodynamic Heating in Supersonic and Hypersonic Flows: Advanced Techniques for Drag and Aero-heating Reduction explores the pros and cons of different heat reduction techniques on other characteristics of hypersonic vehicles. The book begins with an introduction of flow feature around the forebody of space vehicles and explains the main parameters on drag force and heat production in this region. The text then discusses the impact of severe heat production on the nose of hypervelocity vehicles, different reduction techniques for aerodynamic heating, and current practical applications for forebody shock control devices. Delivers valuable insight for aerospace engineers, postgraduate students, and researchers.

Autonomous Navigation and Deployment of UAVs for Communication, Surveillance and Delivery Authoritative resource offering coverage of communication, surveillance, and delivery problems for teams of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) Autonomous Navigation and Deployment of UAVs for Communication, Surveillance and Delivery studies various elements of deployment of networks of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) base stations for providing communication to ground users in disaster areas, covering problems like ground traffic monitoring, surveillance of environmental disaster areas (e.g. brush fires), using UAVs in rescue missions, converting UAV video surveillance, and more. The work combines practical problems, implementable and computationally efficient algorithms to solve these problems, and mathematically rigorous proofs of each algorithm's convergence and performance. One such example provided by the authors is a novel biologically inspired motion camouflage algorithm to covert video surveillance of moving targets by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). All autonomous navigation and deployment algorithms developed in the book are computationally efficient, easily implementable in engineering practice, and based only on limited information on other UAVs of each and the environment. Sample topics discussed in the work include: Deployment of UAV base stations for communication, especially with regards to maximizing coverage and minimizing interference Deployment of UAVs for surveillance of ground areas and targets, including surveillance of both flat and uneven areas Navigation of UAVs for surveillance of moving areas and targets, including disaster areas and ground traffic monitoring Autonomous UAV navigation for covert video surveillance, offering extensive coverage of optimization-based navigation Integration of UAVs and public transportation vehicles for parcel delivery, covering both one-way and round trips Professionals in navigation and deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles, along with researchers, engineers, scientists in intersecting fields, can use Autonomous Navigation and Deployment of UAVs for Communication, Surveillance and Delivery to gain general knowledge on the subject along with practical, precise, and proven algorithms that can be deployed in a myriad of practical situations.

Scramjet Combustion explores the development of a high-speed scramjet engine operating in the supersonic/hypersonic range for various air and space transport applications. The book explains the basic structure, components, working cycle, and the relevant governing equations in a clear manner that speaks to both advanced and more novice audiences. Particular attention is paid to efficient air-fuel combustion, looking at both the underlying fundamentals of combustion as well strategies for obtaining optimum combustion efficiency. Methods for reaching the chemically correct air-fuel ratio, subsequent flame, and combustion stabilization as air enters at supersonic speed are also outlined. Further, it includes the continuous on-going efforts, innovations, and advances with respect to the design modification of scramjet combustors, as well as different strategies of fuel injections for obtaining augmented performance while highlighting the current and future challenges.

Electrostatic Dust Mitigation and Manipulation Techniques for Planetary Dust explains how to control and remove dust in space due to the presence of a vacuum, abrasiveness of dust particles and electrostatic charge on particles. The book introduces innovative technologies that use electrostatic and di-electrophoretic forces to remove and transport small particles away from surfaces. In addition, it discusses how to resolve thermal control problems and reduce lung inhalation and eye irritation problems. The book includes two abrasive wear test devices that were designed to study the rate of volume wear for di?erent materials when subjected to lunar dust simulant of di?erent size ranges. This will be an ideal resource for space system engineers, space exploration researchers, and advanced students and professionals in space engineering.

The solutions to technical challenges posed by flight and space exploration tend to be multidimensional, multifunctional, and increasingly focused on the interaction of systems and their environment. The growing discipline of biomimicry focuses on what humanity can learn from the natural world. Biomimicry for Aerospace: Technologies and Applications features the latest advances of bioinspired materials-properties relationships for aerospace applications. Readers will get a deep dive into the utility of biomimetics to solve a number of technical challenges in aeronautics and space exploration. Part I: Biomimicry in Aerospace: Education, Design, and Inspiration provides an educational background to biomimicry applied for aerospace applications. Part II: Biomimetic Design: Aerospace and Other Practical Applications discusses applications and practical aspects of biomimetic design for aerospace and terrestrial applications and its cross-disciplinary nature. Part III: Biomimicry and Foundational Aerospace Disciplines covers snake-inspired robots, biomimetic advances in photovoltaics, electric aircraft cooling by bioinspired exergy management, and surrogate model-driven bioinspired optimization algorithms for large-scale and complex problems. Finally, Part IV: Bio-Inspired Materials, Manufacturing, and Structures reviews nature-inspired materials and processes for space exploration, gecko-inspired adhesives, bioinspired automated integrated circuit manufacturing on the Moon and Mars, and smart deployable space structures inspired by nature.

Bistatic Synthetic Aperture Radar covers bistatic SAR in a comprehensive way, presenting theory, method and techniques, as well as the most recent research and near-future applications. The book begins with imaging principles and characteristics of monostatic SAR, moving on to common and novel problems before presenting theories, methods and experimental system design. The title presents the design of experimental systems, research results and experimental verification. It gives key knowledge from a leading research group, including one of the earliest bistatic side-looking SAR experiments and the first bistatic forward-looking SAR experiment in the world that used two aircraft. Six chapters cover imaging theory, imaging algorithms, parameter estimation, motion compensation, synchronization and experimental verification. The book describes physical concepts simply and clearly and provides concise mathematical derivations.

Modern Military Aircraft is a fascinating guide to the most important military aircraft developed since World War II. This highly illustrated book features a wide range of aircraft that served in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, conflicts in the Middle East and the Falklands. Types of aircraft range from front line fighters to reconnaissance aircraft to bombers to interceptors and helicopters. Spanning such famous planes as the Lockheed Blackbird and the MiG-21, Modern Military Aircraft also includes lesser-known examples such as the South African Atlas Cheetah and the EH101 Merlin helicopter. Arranged by countries, each of the 75 featured aircraft is presented with outstanding fully annotated three-view colour artworks, development and service history, specification tables and colour and black-&-white photographs. With a wealth of information and splendidly presented, this book is a must for aviation enthusiasts.

Fault-Tolerant Attitude Control of Spacecraft presents the fundamentals of spacecraft fault-tolerant attitude control systems, along with the most recent research and advanced, nonlinear control techniques. This book gives researchers a self-contained guide to the complex tasks of envisaging, designing, implementing and experimenting by presenting designs for integrated modeling, dynamics, fault-tolerant attitude control, and fault reconstruction for spacecraft. Specifically, the book gives a full literature review and presents preliminaries and mathematical models, robust fault-tolerant attitude control, fault-tolerant attitude control with actuator saturation, velocity-free fault tolerant attitude control, finite-time fault-tolerant attitude tracking control, and active fault-tolerant attitude contour. Finally, the book looks at the future of this interesting topic, offering readers a one-stop solution for those working on fault-tolerant attitude control for spacecraft.