Anton Ivanov

Technology Innovation Institute (TII) | TII · Propulsion and Space Research Center

Recent Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) launched in 2021 show the growing interest in the robot’s mobility improvement and application of cooperative robotics. Increased mobility has been addressed by launching the first flying robot to Mars, bringing new opportunities to explore previously inaccessible areas. Such collaborative solutions expand the...

It is found that the tradeoff should be made between seasonal and spatial capabilities for continuous flight of a solar-powered aircraft. The influence of key technologies on solar aircraft perpetual flight capabilities in different regions and seasons is identified. To do that, solar cell efficiency and energy storage specific energy are considere...

We propose the exploration of polar areas on Mars by a next-generation orbiter mission. In particular, we aim at studying the seasonal and regional variations in snow-deposits, which – in combination with measurements of temporal variations in rotation and gravity field – will improve models of the global planetary CO2 cycle. A monitoring of polar...

The Scientific and Educational Center "Engineering of the Future", created on the basis of the Institute of Regional Development of the Samara Region, has formed a number of important sectoral and subject committees, in which it is planned to develop breakthrough technologies in high-tech industries. The Committee on Artificial Intelligence, organi...

We survey the progress in data mining methods for spacecraft health monitoring. The main emphasis is placed on the analysis of telemetry data enabling the identification of spacecraft states that are atypical during normal operation and the prediction of possible failures in the operation of the spacecraft or its components. The main stages require...

This note presents a study of a four-satellite tetrahedral formation to collect, process, and exchange multipoint measurements of geomagnetic field in a near-polar orbit. The study is conducted as a series of numerical experiments based on simulated spacecraft orbits and corresponding geomagnetic field models output. The four satellites are assumed...

Satellites and other complex systems now become more and more software dependent. Even nanosatellites have complexity that can be compared to scientific instruments launched to Mars. COTS components and subsystems may now be purchased to support payload development. On the contrary, the software has to be adapted to the new payload and, consequentl...

During the development of complex multidisciplinary systems, engineers often have problems associated with the complexity of a target system and interactions of different groups of engineers and subcontractors.

This study is a part of the Skoltech University project to deploy a swarm of four identical 3U CubeSats in LEO. The CubeSats are to be equipped with gamma-ray sensors and their collective behavior will be exhibited in detecting gamma-ray bursts and coordinated attitude control. We consider a fully magnetic attitude control system, comprising a magn...

This study is a part of the Skoltech University project to deploy a swarm of four identical 3U CubeSats in LEO. The CubeSats are to be equipped with gamma-ray sensors and their collective behavior will be exhibited in detecting gamma-ray bursts and coordinated attitude control. We consider a fully magnetic attitude control system, comprising a magn...

Wood products are an important export for Russia. Understanding the status of trees and their classification is an ongoing task for many organizations. Currently, documentation of forests is done manually and there is a number of initiatives to implement automatic forest classification. A particular case described in the present paper showcases how...

The expansion of mankind to other planets will require supplying colonies with materials. This paper describes a concept for supplying these colonies with resources extracted from asteroids and proposes the optimization of an interplanetary economy (IE) including Earth, Mars and asteroid groups. We refer to prospective Mars colony design reference...

Skoltech is working on a swarm satellite application to detect Gamma-Ray Bursts autonomously. Coordinated observations of GRB are required for a robust identification, especially given noise levels in individual detectors; such observation requires a network that allows data transfer between satellites in orbit through inter-satellite communication...

Machine learning has been very actively used in analysis of remote sensing data and for a wide range of applications such as agriculture, land and ice surface change detection, etc. In this paper, we explore use of machine learning methods for forest inventory, since it has great impact on economic and ecological sustainability. Our approach is bas...

The Lunar Meteoroid Impact Observer (LUMIO) is one of the four projects selected within ESA’s SysNova competition to develop a small satellite for scientific and technology demonstration purposes to be deployed by a mothership around the Moon. The mission utilizes a 12U form-factor CubeSat which carries the LUMIO-Cam, an optical instrument capable...

We study small satellite formations comprising a number of spacecraft equipped with solar sails, that can be employed as sunlight reflectors. In the appropriate lighting conditions such formations can be visible from Earth and provide graphic images in the sky. The formation's visibility is defined in terms of magnitude, which entails the requireme...

Recently, a lot of attention has been brought to the deep space mining missions. Mining of the natural resources from near-Earth celestial bodies like Moon, near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), comets and meteors is one of the possible ways for solving of the problem of lack of natural resources on Earth. The calculations in the article show that current c...

The rapid growth of complexity of modern space technical systems had increased demand for Systems Engineering (SE) skills. And in order to overcome this gap new approaches are needed in the field of SE education. This paper describes SE courses for MSc and Ph.D. students conducted on a regular basis at Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (...

This paper proposes an algorithm to find the smallest satellite constellation satisfying a given set of Earth observation requirements. This methodology is exemplified with the Satellites Observing Lakes and Vegetation Environments (SOLVE) study, which aims at deploying a fleet of small satellites carrying miniaturized hyperspectral spectrometers....

End-to-end deep-learning networks recently demonstrated extremely good perfor- mance for stereo matching. However, existing networks are difficult to use for practical applications since (1) they are memory-hungry and unable to process even modest-size images, (2) they have to be trained for a given disparity range. The Practical Deep Stereo (PDS)...

Mars Polar Ice caps have been known ever since they were first observed by Cassini. Robotic exploration mis- sions, starting with Mariner 9, have confirmed that they are composed of water ice. During later missions, instruments such as Mars Global Surveyor's MOLA have established a detailed topography and have estimated their depth at about 3 km in...

One of the least understood processes in astrophysics is the formation of planetesimals from molecules and dust within protoplanetary disks. In fact, current methods have strong limitations when it comes to model the full dynamics in this phase of planet formation, where small dust aggregates collide and grow into bigger clusters. That is why micro...

The International Mars Exploration Working Group (IMEWG) was formed in 1993 to provide a forum for the international coordination of Mars exploration. In 2007, IMEWG chartered the international Mars Architecture for the Return of Samples Working Group (iMARS WG), which produced a Phase 1 report in 2008 (iMARS, 2008). In 2014, IMEWG chartered an iMA...

Natural disasters like tsunamis cause enormous damage to infrastructure, the society and the environment particularly when these events are of large magnitude like the Chilean tsunami in 1960 and the Indian Tsunami in 2004 as well as the Great East Earthquake and Tsunami which occurred in Japan on 11 March 2011. As damage is enormous in terms of hu...

The Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) is the main imaging system onboard the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) which was launched on 14 March 2016. CaSSIS is intended to acquire moderately high resolution (4.6 m/pixel) targeted images of Mars at a rate of 10–20 images per day from a roughly circular orbit 400 k...

This Challenge Analysis proposes a Lunar Meteoroid Impact Observer (LUMIO) to observe, quantify, and characterise the meteoroid impacts by detecting the impact flashes on the lunar farside. This will complement the knowledge gathered by Earth-based observations of the lunar nearside, thus synthesising a global information on the lunar meteoroid env...

There are many geometric calibration methods for "standard" cameras. These methods, however, cannot be used for the calibration of telescopes with large focal lengths and complex off-axis optics. Moreover, specialized calibration methods for the telescopes are scarce in literature. We describe the calibration method that we developed for the Colour...

The Intercollegiate Rocket Competition (IREC) gathers students across the world to design and build a rocket that reaches an altitude of 10,000 ft (approximately 3 km) or 30,000 ft (approximately 9 km). The rocket needs to carry 8.8 lb (4 kg) of payload. As a part of this competition, team DUSTER, formed by students from three Swiss universities de...

The ESA-led ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) was launched to Mars on 14 March 2016 [1]. The TGO will search for signs of past and present life on Mars, investigate its geochemical environment, and search for atmospheric trace gases and their sources. The TGO carries 4 scientific instruments in order to reach these goals: this includes the orbiter’s...

There are many geometric calibration methods for "standard" cameras. These methods, however, cannot be used for the calibration of telescopes with large focal lengths and complex off-axis optics. Moreover, specialized calibration methods for the telescopes are scarce in literature. We describe the calibration method that we developed for the Colour...

There has been a revolution in 3D surface imaging of Mars over the last 12 years with systematic stereoscopy from HRSC. Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) and OrthoRectified Images (ORIs) have been produced for almost 50% of the Martian surface. DLR, together with the HRSC science team, produced 3D HRSC mosaic products for large regions comprising aroun...

Deep-learning metrics have recently demonstrated extremely good performance to match image patches for stereo reconstruction. However, training such metrics requires large amount of labeled stereo images, which can be difficult or costly to collect for certain applications. The main contribution of our work is a new semi-supervised method for learn...

In this case study, we apply the architecture-based design approach to the control software of the CubETH satellite. Architectures are a means for ensuring global coordination properties and thus, achieving correctness of complex systems by construction. The design approach comprises three main steps: 1) definition of a domain-specific taxonomy of...

In this case study, we apply the architecture-based design approach to the control software of the CubETH satellite. Architectures are a means for ensuring global coordination properties and thus, achieving correctness of complex systems by construction. We illustrate the following three steps of the design approach: 1) definition of a domain-speci...

There has been a revolution in 3D surface imaging of Mars over the last 12 years with systematic stereoscopy from HRSC and the production for almost 50% of the Martian surface of DTMs and ORIs. The iMars project has been exploiting this unique set of 3D products as a basemap to co-register NASA imagery going back to the 1970s. DLR have produced 3D...

Understanding planetary atmosphere-surface and extra-terrestrial-surface formation processes within our Solar System is one of the fundamental goals of planetary science research. There has been a revolution in planetary surface observations over the last 15 years, especially in 3D imaging of surface shape. This has led to the ability to be able to...

Understanding planetary atmosphere-surface and extra-terrestrial-surface formation processes within our Solar System is one of the fundamental goals of planetary science research. There has been a revolution in planetary surface observations over the last 15 years, especially in 3D imaging of surface shape. This has led to the ability to be able to...

Understanding planetary atmosphere-surface exchange and extra-terrestrial-surface formation processes within our Solar System is one of the fundamental goals of planetary science research. There has been a revolution in planetary surface observations over the last 15 years, especially in 3D imaging of surface shape. This has led to the ability to o...

Understanding planetary atmosphere-surface exchange and extra-terrestrial-surface formation processes within our Solar System is one of the fundamental goals of planetary science research. There has been a revolution in planetary surface observations over the last 15 years, especially in 3D imaging of surface shape. This has led to the ability to o...

CubETH is a one unit CubeSat developed in collaboration between EPFL (Lausanne) and ETH Zurich. The main objective of CubETH is to demonstrate the use of commercial GNSS receivers in space and test Precision Orbit Determination algorithms. One of the key driving requirements is to provide nadir pointing with a 20 degrees of precision and rotation r...

The existence of various forms of the сryolithozone on terrestrial planets and their moons: advanced Martian permafrost zone in the form of existing of the frozen polar caps, subsurface frozen horizons, geological markers and oreols of the martian ancient (relict) ocean, subsurface oceans of Jupiter's and Saturn's moons-Europe and Enceladus, with t...

Understanding the role of different solid surface formation processes within our Solar System is one of the fundamental goals of planetary science research. There has been a revolution in planetary surface observations over the last 8 years, especially in 3D imaging of surface shape (down to resolutions of 10s of cms) and subsequent terrain correct...

Understanding the role of different planetary surface formation processes within our Solar System is one of the fundamental goals of planetary science research. There has been a revolution in planetary surface observations over the last 8 years, especially in 3D imaging of surface shape (down to resolutions of 10cm) and subsequent terrain correctio...

This paper describes the development and testing of a reaction control system (RCS) for a model rocket named FALCO-4. The rocket uses cold gas jets to keep itself perfectly vertical at low speeds. We first describe the mechanical layout of FALCO-4 and the characteristics of the cold gas propulsion system. We then propose a dynamical model of the ro...

We assess several algorithms for generating digital terrain models (DTM) of Mars using high-resolution stereoscopic images produced by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera and Context Camera (CTX) onboard the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft. One of the algorithms was developed jointly by University of Seo...

Understanding the role of different planetary surface formation processes within our Solar System is one of the fundamental goals of planetary science research. There has been a revolution in planetary surface observations over the last 15 years, especially in 3D imaging of surface shape. This has led to the ability to be able to overlay different...

CubETH is a project to evaluate and demonstrate possibilities of low-cost GNSS receivers on a nano-satellite by following the Cubesat standard. The development of this new Swiss cubesat mission is underway at the Swiss Polytechnical Schools, launch is planned for 2016. Scientific goal are: precise orbit determination and estimate of satellite at...

Understanding the role of different planetary surface formation processes within our Solar System is one of the fundamental goals of planetary science research. There has been a revolution in planetary surface observations over the last 7 years, especially in 3D imaging of surface shape (down to resolutions of 10cm) and subsequent terrain correctio...

The problem of designing an effective models and methods for data transmission between group of microsatellites and network of ground stations in the dynamically changing environment is considered. Multi-agent technology for solving the problem by adaptive resource allocation and scheduling is proposed. It is shown that solution of the considered c...

SwissCube: the first entire Swiss satellite is now on orbit; planned to operate for at least twelve months, it will have four years in the 23th of September; four years of data and results from the space and from its payload and operations. As cubesat made by students it is a good result: more than 200 students worked on it before and after the lau...

SwissCube has downloaded a big amount of data from space until today, some of them are very interesting for education, and they can open possibilities of learning some important lessons for space subsystems and future cubesat's designs. In particular, here are taken into account four years of flight data coming from the temperature sensors of Swiss...

As of today almost a decade of observational data have been returned by the multidisciplinary instruments on-board the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft. All data are archived into the ESA's Planetary Science Archive (PSA), which is the central repository for all ESA's Solar System missions [1]. Data users can perform advanced queries and retrieve data...

Ground based radial velocity (RV) searches continue to discover exoplanets below Neptune mass down to Earth mass. Furthermore, ground based transit searches now reach milli-mag photometric precision and can discover Neptune size planets around bright stars. These searches will find exoplanets around bright stars anywhere on the sky, their discoveri...

This is a pilot project to create a GIS-enabled database of MARSIS data. We expect to showcase a prototype and collect community feedback on its features.

The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) is the first radar to collect data from Mars orbit. MARSIS is a multi-frequency synthetic aperture orbital sounding radar. MARSIS acquires data in the conventional fashion of a radar in the range 0.1-5.5 MHz, which corresponds to wavelength of tens to hundreds of metres. These...

The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) onboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been used to observe Phobos and Deimos at spatial scales of around 6 and 20 m/px, respectively. HiRISE (McEwen et al., JGR, 112, CiteID E05S02, DOI: 10.1029/2005JE002605, 2007) has provided, for the first time, high-resolution colour images of the...

HiSCI has been chosen for the payload of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), a joint ESA/NASA mission scheduled to arrive at Mars in 2016 [1]. There are 3 major HiSCI partners: (1) the telescope assembly will be built in Switzerland overseen by the University of Bern; (2) the overall design, electronics, and integration will be by Ball Aerospace i...

In the scope of the MARSIS experiment (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding) aboard the European Spacecraft MarsExpress, the Martian moon Phobos was sounded several times.[1] Using a simulation tool based on the method of Physical Optics, given the trajectory data and a digital elevation map of the terrain, we analyze the sign...