The Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) on the New Horizons Mission

The Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) comprises the hardware and accompanying science investigation on the New Horizons spacecraft to measure pick-up ions from Pluto’s outgassing atmosphere. To the extent that Pluto retains its characteristics similar to those of a “heavy comet” as detected in stellar occultations since the early 1980s, these measurements will characterize the neutral atmosphere of Pluto while providing a consistency check on the atmospheric escape rate at the encounter epoch with that deduced from the atmospheric structure at lower altitudes by the ALICE, REX, and SWAP experiments on New Horizons. In addition, PEPSSI will characterize any extended ionosphere and solar wind interaction while also characterizing the energetic particle environment of Pluto, Charon, and their associated system. First proposed for development for the Pluto Express mission in September 1993, what became the PEPSSI instrument went through a number of development stages to meet the requirements of such an instrument for a mission to Pluto while minimizing the required spacecraft resources. The PEPSSI instrument provides for measurements of ions (with compositional information) and electrons from 10 s of keV to ～1 MeV in a 160°×12° fan-shaped beam in six sectors for 1.5 kg and ～2.5 W.     

The NASA Astrobiology Roadmap

The NASA Astrobiology Roadmap provides guidance for research and technology development across the NASA enterprises that encompass the space, Earth, and biological sciences. The ongoing development of astrobiology roadmaps embodies the contributions of diverse scientists and technologists from government, universities, and private institutions. The Roadmap addresses three basic questions: how does life begin and evolve, does life exist elsewhere in the universe, and what is the future of life on Earth and beyond? Seven Science Goals outline the following key domains of investigation: understanding the nature and distribution of habitable environments in the universe, exploring for habitable environments and life in our own Solar System, understanding the emergence of life, determining how early life on Earth interacted and evolved with its changing environment, understanding the evolutionary mechanisms and environmental limits of life, determining the principles that will shape life in the future, and recognizing signatures of life on other worlds and on early Earth. For each of these goals, Science Objectives outline more specific high priority efforts for the next three to five years. These eighteen objectives are being integrated with NASA strategic planning.     

Solar Wind Conditions and Composition During the Genesis Mission as Measured by in situ Spacecraft

We describe the Genesis mission solar-wind sample collection period and the solar wind conditions at the L1 point during this 2.3-year period. In order to relate the solar wind samples to solar composition, the conditions under which the samples were collected must be understood in the context of the long-term solar wind. We find that the state of the solar wind was typical of conditions over the past four solar cycles. However, Genesis spent a relatively large fraction of the time in coronal-hole flow as compared to what might have been expected for the declining phase of the solar cycle. Data from the Solar Wind Ion Composition Spectrometer (SWICS) on the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) are used to determine the effectiveness of the Genesis solar-wind regime selection algorithm. The data collected by SWICS confirm that the Genesis algorithm successfully separated and collected solar wind regimes having distinct solar origins, particularly in the case of the coronal hole sample. The SWICS data also demonstrate that the different regimes are elementally fractionated. When compared with Ulysses composition data from the previous solar cycle, we find a similar degree of fractionation between regimes as well as fractionation relative to the average photospheric composition. The Genesis solar wind samples are under long-term curation at NASA Johnson Space Center so that as sample analysis techniques evolve, pristine solar wind samples will be available to the scientific community in the decades to come. This article and a companion paper (Wiens et al. 2013, this issue) provide post-flight information necessary for the analysis of the Genesis array and foil solar wind samples and the Genesis solar wind ion concentrator samples, and thus serve to complement the Space Science Review volume, The Genesis Mission (v. 105, 2003).     

New reference trajectory optimization algorithm for a flight management system inspired in beam search

With the objective of reducing the flight cost and the amount of polluting emissions released in the atmosphere, a new optimization algorithm considering the climb, cruise and descent phases is presented for the reference vertical flight trajectory. The selection of the reference vertical navigation speeds and altitudes was solved as a discrete combinatory problem by means of a graphtree passing through nodes using the beam search optimization technique. To achieve a compromise between the execution time and the algorithm's ability to find the global optimal solution, a heuristic methodology introducing a parameter called ‘‘optimism coefficient was used in order to estimate the trajectory's flight cost at every node. The optimal trajectory cost obtained with the developed algorithm was compared with the cost of the optimal trajectory provided by a commercial flight management system(FMS). The global optimal solution was validated against an exhaustive search algorithm(ESA), other than the proposed algorithm. The developed algorithm takes into account weather effects, step climbs during cruise and air traffic management constraints such as constant altitude segments, constant cruise Mach, and a pre-defined reference lateral navigation route. The aircraft fuel burn was computed using a numerical performance model which was created and validated using flight test experimental data.     

Planned Products of the Mars Structure Service for the InSight Mission to Mars

Space Science Reviews - The InSight lander will deliver geophysical instruments to Mars in 2018, including seismometers installed directly on the surface (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure,...     

Modeling of Ground Deformation and Shallow Surface Waves Generated by Martian Dust Devils and Perspectives for Near-Surface Structure Inversion

We investigated the possible seismic signatures of dust devils on Mars, both at long and short period, based on the analysis of Earth data and on forward modeling for Mars. Seismic and meteorological data collected in the Mojave Desert, California, recorded the signals generated by dust devils. In the 10–100 s band, the quasi-static surface deformation triggered by pressure fluctuations resulted in detectable ground-tilt effects: these are in good agreement with our modeling based on Sorrells’ theory. In addition, high-frequency records also exhibit a significant excitation in correspondence to dust devil episodes. Besides wind noise, this signal includes shallow surface waves due to the atmosphere-surface coupling and is used for a preliminary inversion of the near-surface S-wave profile down to 50 m depth. In the case of Mars, we modeled the long-period signals generated by the pressure field resulting from turbulence-resolving Large-Eddy Simulations. For typical dust-devil-like vortices with pressure drops of a couple Pascals, the corresponding horizontal acceleration is of a few nm/s² for rocky subsurface models and reaches 10–20 nm/s² for weak regolith models. In both cases, this signal can be detected by the Very-Broad Band seismometers of the InSight/SEIS experiment up to a distance of a few hundred meters from the vortex, the amplitude of the signal decreasing as the inverse of the distance. Atmospheric vortices are thus expected to be detected at the InSight landing site; the analysis of their seismic and atmospheric signals could lead to additional constraints on the near-surface structure, more precisely on the ground compliance and possibly on the seismic velocities.     

Dust Near The Sun

We review the current knowledge and understanding of dust in the inner solar system. The major sources of the dust population in the inner solar system are comets and asteroids, but the relative contributions of these sources are not quantified. The production processes inward from 1 AU are: Poynting-Robertson deceleration of particles outside of 1 AU, fragmentation into dust due to particle-particle collisions, and direct dust production from comets. The loss processes are: dust collisional fragmentation, sublimation, radiation pressure acceleration, sputtering, and rotational bursting. These loss processes as well as dust surface processes release dust compounds in the ambient interplanetary medium. Between 1 and 0.1 AU the dust number densities and fluxes can be described by inward extrapolation of 1 AU measurements, assuming radial dependences that describe particles in close to circular orbits. Observations have confirmed the general accuracy of these assumptions for regions within 30° latitude of the ecliptic plane. The dust densities are considerably lower above the solar poles but Lorentz forces can lift particles of sizes < 5 μm to high latitudes and produce a random distribution of small grains that varies with the solar magnetic field. Also long-period comets are a source of out-of-ecliptic particles. Under present conditions no prominent dust ring exists near the Sun. We discuss the recent observations of sungrazing comets. Future in-situ experiments should measure the complex dynamics of small dust particles, identify the contribution of cometary dust to the inner-solar-system dust cloud, and determine dust interactions in the ambient interplanetary medium. The combination of in-situ dust measurements with particle and field measurements is recommended.     

Economic rhythms,Maslow Windows and the new space frontier

This paper explores the possible relationship between space exploration and long swings in the economy and socio-technical systems. We posit that the early phases of long upswings are characterized by periods of optimism and the spirit of adventure that provided a motivation for large-scale explorations and other great infrastructure projects in the past. These Maslow Windows help us understand prior eras of exploration and cultural dynamism, and offer a hopeful scenario for space exploration in the next two decades. We offer some observations as to what the exploratory thrust might look like, including a return to the lunar surface combined with other activities. Of course, we also point out that the next great wave of space exploration will almost certainly have a much more international flavor than has heretofore been the case.