The aim of this paper is to investigate the performance a robotic spacecraft, whose primary propulsion system an electric solar wind sail (E-sail), in mission heliostationary point (HP)—that is, static equilibrium heliocentric and inertial reference frame. A spacecraft placed at given HP with zero velocity maintains that position provided on-board thrust able counterbalance Sun’s gravitational ...

Innovative solar system exploration missions require ever larger velocity increments and thus ever more demanding propulsion capabilities. Using for those high-energy missions the stateof-the-art technique of chemical propulsion in combination with (eventually multiple) gravity assist maneuvers results in long, complicated, and inflexible mission profiles. Low-thrust propulsions systems can sig...

When a robot is walking in a complex environment, it needs to adjust its step length and walking speed for each step (very probably). This implies that the initial position and/or velocity, the designed terminal position and/or velocity, and the walking time period for each step are very often different. From this view point, the optimal gait generation problem for a biped robot is equivalent t...