Photon-sail trajectories to exoplanet Proxima b using heteroclinic connections

Now that a rocky planet is confirmed to orbit in the habitable zone of our closest stellar neighbor Proxima Centauri, the interest in visiting that system is growing; especially since Breakthrough Starshot proposed a fly-through mission of the Alpha Centauri system by sending a swarm of laser-driven photon sails. While many engineering problems...

Trajectory Optimization for a Mission to the Solar Bow Shock and Minor Planets

In November 2003 the Voyager 1 spacecraft pierced through the Solar system’s termination shock, followed by Voyager 2 in August 2007. These events marked the beginning of interstellar exploration by spacecraft, which caused a wave of renewed interest in the outer heliosphere throughout the scienti?c community. This thesis research investigated...