Planetary Radio Interferometry and Doppler Experiment (PRIDE) of the JUICE Mission

Planetary Radio Interferometry and Doppler Experiment (PRIDE) is a multi-purpose experimental technique aimed at enhancing the science return of planetary missions. The technique exploits the science payload and spacecraft service systems without requiring a dedicated onboard instrumentation or imposing on the existing instrumentation any...

LOUPE: Observing Earth from the Moon to prepare for detecting life on Earth-like exoplanets: Observing Earth from the Moon to prepare for detecting life on Earth-like exoplanets: LOUPE: Observing Earth from the Moon

LOUPE, the Lunar Observatory for Unresolved Polarimetry of the Earth, is a small, robust spectro-polarimeter for observing the Earth as an exoplanet. Detecting Earth-like planets in stellar habitable zones is one of the key challenges of modern exoplanetary science. Characterizing such planets and searching for traces of life requires the...

Biosignatures of the Earth: I. Airborne spectropolarimetric detection of photosynthetic life

Context. Homochirality is a generic and unique property of life on Earth and is considered a universal and agnostic biosignature. Homochirality induces fractional circular polarization in the incident light that it reflects. Because this circularly polarized light can be sensed remotely, it can be one of the most compelling candidate...

PRIDE: Ground-based VLBI observations for Spaceborne Probes

Planetary Radio Interferometry and Doppler Experiment (PRIDE) will exploit the signal recording and processing technology developed originally for Very Lonag Baseline interferometric (VLBI). The essence of PRIDE is in observing the spacecraft radio signal with a network of Earth-based radio telescopes. The PRIDE technique developed at the Joint...

Design of the life signature detection polarimeter LSDpol

Many biologically produced chiral molecules such as amino acids and sugars show a preference for left or right handedness (homochirality). Light reflected by biological materials such as algae and leaves therefore exhibits a small amount of circular polarization that strongly depends on wavelength. Our Life Signature Detection polarimeter ...

Design of a Micro-Propulsion Subsystem for a PocketQube

This papers gives an insight on different sub topics related to a micro-propulsion subsystem for a PocketQube. First, PocketQubes will be introduced and then Delfi-PQ will be presented, providing an overview of the mission for which this micro-propulsion system will be used. Step by step, the paper will explain the subsystem, its challenges,...

PRIDE: Near-field VLBI observations for Planetary Probes

Planetary Radio Interferometry and Doppler Experiment (PRIDE) is a multi-purpose experimental technique aimed at enhancing the science return of planetary missions. It is based on, the near-field phase-referencing VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) and radial Doppler measurements. It has been developed initially by the Joint Institute for...

Integration and Miniaturization Challenges in the Design of Micro-Propulsion Systems for Picosatellite Platforms

As a further step in the research towards miniaturization of satellite components and sub-systems, the Department of Space Systems Engineering at the Delft University of Technology has recently embarked in the end-to-end engineering of the Delfi-PQ picosatellite platform, designed according to the PocketQube size standard. This new satellite...

Planetary radio interferometry and doppler experiment (PRIDE) for planetary probes