EclipseNETs: a differentiable description of irregular eclipse conditions

In the field of spaceflight mechanics and astrodynamics, determining eclipse regions is a frequent and critical challenge. This determination impacts various factors, including the acceleration induced by solar radiation pressure, the spacecraft power input, and its thermal state all of which must be accounted for in various phases of the mission design. This study leverages recent advances in neural image processing to develop fully differentiable models of eclipse regions for highly irregular celestial bodies. By utilizing test cases involving Solar System bodies previously visited by spacecraft, such as 433 Eros, 25143 Itokawa, 67P/Churyumov--Gerasimenko, and 101955 Bennu, we propose and study an implicit neural architecture defining the shape of the eclipse cone based on the Sun's direction. Employing periodic activation functions, we achieve high precision in modeling eclipse conditions. Furthermore, we discuss the potential applications of these differentiable models in spaceflight mechanics computations.

NeuralODEs for VLEO simulations: Introducing thermoNET for Thermosphere Modeling

We introduce a novel neural architecture termed thermoNET, designed to represent thermospheric density in satellite orbital propagation using a reduced amount of differentiable computations. Due to the appearance of a neural network on the right-hand side of the equations of motion, the resulting satellite dynamics is governed by a NeuralODE, a neural Ordinary Differential Equation, characterized by its fully differentiable nature, allowing the derivation of variational equations (hence of the state transition matrix) and facilitating its use in connection to advanced numerical techniques such as Taylor-based numerical propagation and differential algebraic techniques. Efficient training of the network parameters occurs through two distinct approaches. In the first approach, the network undergoes training independently of spacecraft dynamics, engaging in a pure regression task against ground truth models, including JB-08 and NRLMSISE-00. In the second paradigm, network parameters are learned based on observed dynamics, adapting through ODE sensitivities. In both cases, the outcome is a flexible, compact model of the thermosphere density greatly enhancing numerical propagation efficiency while maintaining accuracy in the orbital predictions.

Small Celestial Body Exploration with CubeSat Swarms

This work presents a large-scale simulation study investigating the deployment and operation of distributed swarms of CubeSats for interplanetary missions to small celestial bodies. Utilizing Taylor numerical integration and advanced collision detection techniques, we explore the potential of large CubeSat swarms in capturing gravity signals and reconstructing the internal mass distribution of a small celestial body while minimizing risks and Delta V budget. Our results offer insight into the applicability of this approach for future deep space exploration missions.

Differentiable Genetic Programming

We introduce the use of high order automatic differentiation, implemented via the algebra of truncated Taylor polynomials, in genetic programming. Using the Cartesian Genetic Programming encoding we obtain a high-order Taylor representation of the program output that is then used to back-propagate errors during learning. The resulting machine learning framework is called differentiable Cartesian Genetic Programming (dCGP). In the context of symbolic regression, dCGP offers a new approach to the long unsolved problem of constant representation in GP expressions. On several problems of increasing complexity we find that dCGP is able to find the exact form of the symbolic expression as well as the constants values. We also demonstrate the use of dCGP to solve a large class of differential equations and to find prime integrals of dynamical systems, presenting, in both cases, results that confirm the efficacy of our approach.