The Cassini Cosmic Dust Analyzer

The Cassini-Huygens Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) is intended to provide direct observations of dust grains with masses between 10⁻¹⁹ and 10⁻⁹ kg in interplanetary space and in the jovian and saturnian systems, to investigate their physical, chemical and dynamical properties as functions of the distances to the Sun, to Jupiter and to Saturn and its satellites and rings, to study their interaction with the saturnian rings, satellites and magnetosphere. Chemical composition of interplanetary meteoroids will be compared with asteroidal and cometary dust, as well as with Saturn dust, ejecta from rings and satellites. Ring and satellites phenomena which might be effects of meteoroid impacts will be compared with the interplanetary dust environment. Electrical charges of particulate matter in the magnetosphere and its consequences will be studied, e.g. the effects of the ambient plasma and the magnetic field on the trajectories of dust particles as well as fragmentation of particles due to electrostatic disruption.The investigation will be performed with an instrument that measures the mass, composition, electric charge, speed, and flight direction of individual dust particles. It is a highly reliable and versatile instrument with a mass sensitivity 10⁶ times higher than that of the Pioneer 10 and 11 dust detectors which measured dust in the saturnian system. The Cosmic Dust Analyzer has significant inheritance from former space instrumentation developed for the VEGA, Giotto, Galileo, and Ulysses missions. It will reliably measure impacts from as low as 1 impact per month up to 10⁴ impacts per second. The instrument weighs 17 kg and consumes 12 W, the integrated time-of-flight mass spectrometer has a mass resolution of up to 50. The nominal data transmission rate is 524 bits/s and varies between 50 and 4192 bps.This revised version was published online in July 2005 with a corrected cover date.     

Orbits and Integrals in Self-Consistent Systems

We find the forms of the orbits in a self-consistent galactic model generated by a N-body simulation of the collapse of a protogalaxy. The model represents a stationary elliptical galaxy of type E5, which is approximately axisymmetric around its longest axis. The orbits are of three main types, box orbits (including box-like orbits), tube orbits and chaotic orbits. The box or box-like and tube orbits are represented by closed invariant curves on a Poincaré surface of section. The forms of the orbits and of the invariant curves can be explained by a third integral of motion I, that is given by the Giorgilli (1979) computer program. The nonresonant form of the third integral explains the box orbits, while a resonant form of this integral explains both the box orbits and the 1:1 tube orbits. The N-body model gives the distribution of velocities F, which is an exponential of the third integral.     

随机载荷作用下元件断裂可靠性的裂纹长度模型

研究了随机载荷条件下元件断裂可靠性计算的方法,给出了一般和特殊条件下元件断裂可靠性的计算方法,并采用Monte Carlo法模拟裂纹在随机载荷作用下的随机扩展.通过对模拟计算结果的统计分析得出任意给定时刻疲劳裂纹尺寸的分布,以及临界裂纹尺寸的分布,并提出用修改了的裂纹长度模型计算裂纹在随机扩展中的瞬时可靠度和过程可靠度.     

Spectral-domain covariance estimation with a priori knowledge

A knowledge-aided spectral-domain approach to estimating the interference covariance matrix used in space-time adaptive processing (STAP) is proposed. Prior knowledge of the range-Doppler clutter scene is used to identify geographic regions with homogeneous scattering statistics. Then, minimum-variance spectral estimation is used to arrive at a spectral-domain clutter estimate. Finally, space-time steering vectors are used to transform the spectral-domain estimate into a data-domain estimate of the clutter covariance matrix. The proposed technique is compared with ideal performance and to the fast maximum likelihood technique using simulated results. An investigation of the performance degradation that can occur due to various inaccurate knowledge assumptions is also presented     

俄罗斯铝锂合金的研制和应用概况

本文介绍了俄国1420,1430,1450等铝锂合金的研制过程和性能,并与西方类似合金进行了对比,同时还列举了铝锂合金在战斗机、运输机、民航机和直升机上作为结构元件和应用情况。     

Photoelectron Counting Statistics and Error Performance of m-Distributed Optical Signal

By the term "m-distributed optical signal" we mean a noise-like optical signal whose envelope (or intensity) fluctuation probability is modeled by Nakagami's "m-distribution." Using the m-distribution which has been widely used as an analytical model of the fading envelope in radio communications, it is shown that one can generally analyze the statistical properties such as the photoelectron count probabilities and error probabilities for the wider class of noise-like optical signals; some numerical results are also given.     

A Functionally Redundant Altimeter

A scheme to provide redundant sensor data in an automatic control system using the principle of functional redundancy is described. Normally there are three redundant radar altimeters used in the terminal phase of automatic landing of jet transport airplanes. This scheme replaces one of these altimeters with a data processing scheme based on a Kalman filter. The filter is driven by altitude rate and acceleration signals from the air data computer and vertical accelerometer. A special initialization technique employs the two altimeter signals. The feasibility of this scheme is indicated by tests in which data obtained from these several sensors during flight tests are used to drive the functionally redundant altimeter.     

A Comparative Study of the Influence of the Active Young Sun on the Early Atmospheres of Earth, Venus, and Mars

Because the solar radiation and particle environment plays a major role in all atmospheric processes such as ionization, dissociation, heating of the upper atmospheres, and thermal and non-thermal atmospheric loss processes, the long-time evolution of planetary atmospheres and their water inventories can only be understood within the context of the evolving Sun. We compare the effect of solar induced X-ray and EUV (XUV) heating on the upper atmospheres of Earth, Venus and Mars since the time when the Sun arrived at the Zero-Age-Main-Sequence (ZAMS) about 4.6 Gyr ago. We apply a diffusive-gravitational equilibrium and thermal balance model for studying heating of the early thermospheres by photodissociation and ionization processes, due to exothermic chemical reactions and cooling by IR-radiating molecules like CO₂, NO, OH, etc. Our model simulations result in extended thermospheres for early Earth, Venus and Mars. The exospheric temperatures obtained for all the three planets during this time period lead to diffusion-limited hydrodynamic escape of atomic hydrogen and high Jeans’ escape rates for heavier species like H₂, He, C, N, O, etc. The duration of this blow-off phase for atomic hydrogen depends essentially on the mixing ratios of CO₂, N₂ and H₂O in the atmospheres and could last from ∼100 to several hundred million years. Furthermore, we study the efficiency of various non-thermal atmospheric loss processes on Venus and Mars and investigate the possible protecting effect of the early martian magnetosphere against solar wind induced ion pick up erosion. We find that the early martian magnetic field could decrease the ion-related non-thermal escape rates by a great amount. It is possible that non-magnetized early Mars could have lost its whole atmosphere due to the combined effect of its extended upper atmosphere and a dense solar wind plasma flow of the young Sun during about 200 Myr after the Sun arrived at the ZAMS. Depending on the solar wind parameters, our model simulations for early Venus show that ion pick up by strong solar wind from a non-magnetized planet could erode up to an equivalent amount of ∼250 bar of O⁺ ions during the first several hundred million years. This accumulated loss corresponds to an equivalent mass of ∼1 terrestrial ocean (TO (1 TO ∼1.39×10²⁴ g or expressed as partial pressure, about 265 bar, which corresponds to ∼2900 m average depth)). Finally, we discuss and compare our findings with the results of preceding studies.     

A relative navigation system for formation flight

A relative navigation system based on both the Inertial Navigation System (INS) and the Global Positioning System (GPS) is developed to support situational awareness during formation flight. The architecture of the system requires an INS/GPS integration across two aircraft via a data link. A fault-tolerant federated filter is used to estimate the relative INS errors based on relative GPS measurements and a range measurement obtained from the data link. The filter is constructed based on a reduced-order model of the relative INS error process. A method for analyzing the filter performance is presented. A case involving two helicopters in formation flight is studied under three different night trajectories to account for the effect of vehicle motion on the INS state transition matrix. The results of the covariance analysis are compared with actual night results over an instrumented test range.     

Instrument Failure Detection in Partially Observable Systems

Instrument failure detection using the dedicated observer scheme (DOS) depends on partial state observability through each instrument which is monitored. For instrument fault detection by the DOS technique, a quantitative measure of partial state observability is established for each instrument and used to determine a necessary condition on the output structure of the system. This measure, called the internal redundancy of the instrument, indicates the complexity of the logic required for failure detection, and it also indicates where some hardware redundancy can be introduced into the system to improve the fault detection capability of the DOS. The principles developed are applied to a simulation of the pitch axis autopilot of the A7 jet aircraft.