Resolution Limits with Propagation Phase Errors

Resolution limits and corresponding optimum linear apertures are determined in the presence of phase errors. Let ?(t) be the phase aberration at position t across the aperture; it is assumed that the random process ? has a power law structure function, E{[(?(t)-?(?)]2}= c|t-?|n. Beam tilting caused by the phase error is "removed" (for each sample of ?), then resolution formulas are developed. An approximate analysis is obtained in closed form and yields an optimum resolution proportional to c1/n for O < n < 2. The exact analysis is given for Gaussian ?, and again the optimum resolution is proportional to c1/n. In applications n= 5/3 is of interest, and in the Gaussian case the best obtainable equivalent rectangle resolution is ? ?)/2? (0.975)c3/5 radians with a corresponding optimum linear aperture of 14c-3/5. When long exposures are considered, imaging without removing beam tilting is of interest, and resolution is degraded by a factor of about 2.5 for a linear aperture. Alternatively, in some applications optimum focus as well as beam tilt should be considered, in this case resolution is improved by a factor of about 1.4 (again for n= 5/3). Finally, joint (tilt corrected) optimization over aperture length and taper is treated; however, as one might expect, the use of taper offers negligible resolution improvement.     

Measuring the economic benefits of a national planetary protection policy to regulate future private space activities between Earth and Mars: Results of a contingent valuation survey in Greece

The emergence of private space actors may soon enable the growth of the novel market segments of space research and exploration, space resources utilization, and human access to space. The interdisciplinary field of Planetary Protection has to keep up with these advances. Planetary Protection is defined as a set of guidelines that aim to prevent the forward contamination of celestial bodies with biological material from Earth and the backward contamination of the terrestrial biosphere with extraterrestrial biological material. As space entrepreneurs acquire and develop the resources and competencies for commercial access to space, significant questions are expected to be raised in the future with respect to potential forward and backward contamination issues, particularly with respect to activities between Earth and Mars. Although such private activities do not seem to pose a serious Planetary Protection threat at the moment, certain preparatory steps need to be taken in order to prudently inform the relevant policy-making procedures. This work describes the application of the Contingent Valuation Method, a useful tool of the environmental economics discipline, with the aim of demonstrating a novel approach to estimate the economic valuation of the external benefits of preventing forward and backward contamination between Earth and Mars. Particularly, via a survey specifically developed for this purpose, a set of questions are used to elicit the perceived economic value that respondents place on the prevention of forward and backward contamination; the survey is administered to a national probability sample in Greece, and the generated data is processed through statistical analysis. The Contingent Valuation Method is a popular and well-established stated preference valuation technique; these techniques are often the more suitable choice for ex-ante valuations of future changes, and are currently the only known approach to capture all the aspects of the economic value of non-market goods. Through an initial proof-of-concept in Greece, the goal of this work is to provide useful insights on the expected external benefits of a national Planetary Protection policy to regulate future private space activities between Earth and Mars, and to encourage a larger-scale application of this tool in other countries around the world.     

Development and growth of potato tubers in microgravity.

A potato explant consisting of a leaf, its axillary bud, and a small segment of stem will develop a tuber in 10-14 days when grown on earth. The tubers develop from the axillary buds and accumulate starch derived from sugars produced through photosynthesis and/or mobilized from leaf tissue. Potato explants were harvested and maintained in the Astroculture (TM) unit, a plant growth chamber designed for spaceflight. The unit provides an environment with controlled temperature, humidity, CO2 level, light intensity, and a nutrient delivery system. The hardware was loaded onto the space shuttle Columbia 24 hours prior to the launch of the STS-73 mission. Explant leaf tissue appeared turgid and green for the first 11 days of flight, but then became chlorotic and eventually necrotic by the end of the mission. The same events occurred to ground control explants with approximately the same timing. At the end of the 16-day mission, tubers were present on each explant. The size and shape of the space-grown tubers were similar to the ground-control tubers. The arrangement of cells in the tuber interior and at the exterior in the periderm was similar in both environments. Starch and protein were present in the tubers grown in space and on the ground. The range in starch grain size was similar in tubers from both environments, but the distribution of grains into size classes differed somewhat, with the space-grown tubers having more small grains than the ground control tubers. Proteinaceous crystals were found in tubers formed in each condition.     

Energy Control for Microwave Amplifier Arrays

In large systems using microwave amplifier arrays, the size, weight, and cost of individual energy sources require consideration of the use of a common power supply and energy storage bank. Complex energy control techniques may be necessary to protect the RF amplifier and to provide isolation of the faulted amplifier from the common energy source. Four approaches are discussed. Three of these are dependent on either the development of reliable arc-free microwave amplifiers or special isolator tubes, gas or vacuum types. A practical circuit using available components is suggested. Its advantages and limitations are discussed. Calculations are presented showing this approach can result in increased system efficiency, improved regulation, and large decreases in the size of the secondary capacitance bank for each microwave amplifier.     

Cytochemical localization of calcium in soybean root cap cells in microgravity.

The antimonate precipitation technique was used to evaluate the effects of microgravity and ethylene on the cellular and subcellular distribution of free calcium ions in soybean root apices. Soybean (Glycine max L. [Merr.]) dry seeds were launched, activated by hydration, and germinated in the presence of KMnO4 (to remove ethylene) and in its absence onboard the space shuttle Columbia during the STS-87 mission. Primary root apices of 6-day old seedlings were fixed for electron microscopy after landing. Ultrastructural studies indicated that antimonate precipitation appeared as individual electron-dense particles which were more or less round in shape and varied in diameter from 10 nm (minimum size beginning from which the particles were well identified) to 90 nm. It was revealed that analyzed root cap cells varied in both the precipitate particle sizes and the amount particles per unit of the cellular area. In both flight and ground control treatments, antimonate precipitation level increases from apical meristem cells to peripheral (secretory) cells of root apices. In root cap statocytes, subcellular localization of precipitate particles was revealed in the cytoplasm, nucleus and small vacuoles. The quantitative analysis showed a reduction of precipitate density in the cytoplasm and the nucleus, and an increase in precipitate density in the vacuoles from statocytes of both spaceflight treatments in comparison with ground controls.     

The Dawn Spacecraft

The Dawn spacecraft is designed to travel to and operate in orbit around the two largest main belt asteroids, Vesta and Ceres. Developed to meet a ten-year life and fully redundant, the spacecraft accommodates an ion propulsion system, including three ion engines and xenon propellant tank, utilizes large solar arrays to power the engines, carries the science instrument payload, and hosts the hardware and software required to successfully collect and transmit the scientific data back to Earth. The launch of the Dawn spacecraft in September 2007 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was the culmination of nearly five years of design, development, integration and testing of this unique system, one of the very few scientific spacecraft to rely on ion propulsion. The Dawn spacecraft arrived at its first destination, Vesta, in July 2011, where it will conduct science operations for twelve months before departing for Ceres.     

Linking Primordial to Solar and Galactic Composition

Evolution and composition of baryonic matter is influenced by the evolution of other forms of matter and energy in the universe. At the time of primordial nucleosynthesis the universal expansion and thus the decrease of the density and temperature of baryonic matter were controlled by leptons and photons. Non-baryonic dark matter initiated the formation of clusters and galaxies, and to this day, dark matter largely determines the dynamics and geometries of these baryonic structures and indirectly influences their chemical evolution. Chemical analyses and isotopic abundance measurements in the solar system established the composition in the protosolar cloud (PSC). The abundances of nuclear species in the PSC led to the discovery of the magic numbers and the nuclear shell model, and they allowed the identification of nucleosynthetic sites and processes. To this day, we know the abundances of the ∼300 stable and long-lived nuclides infinitely better in the PSC than in any other sample of matter in the universe. Thus, we know the exact composition of a Galactic sample of intermediate age, allowing us to check on theories of Galactic evolution before and after the formation of the solar system. This paper specifically discusses the nucleosynthesis in the early universe and the Galactic evolution during the last 5 Gyr.     

Learning to Reach to Locations Encoded from Imaging Displays

We examined the use of hand gestures while people solved spatial reasoning problem in which they had to infer motion from static diagrams (mental animation problems). In Experiment 1, participants were asked to think aloud while solving mental animation problems. They gestured on more than 90% of problems, and most gestures expressed information about the component motions that was not stated in words. Two further experiments examined whether the gestures functioned in the mechanical inference process, or whether they merely served functions of expressing or communicating the results of this process. In these experiments, we examined the effects of instructions to think aloud, restricting participants' hand motions, and secondary tasks on mental animation performance. Although participants who were instructed to think aloud gestured more than control groups, some gestures occurred even in control conditions. A concurrent spatial tapping task impaired performance on mechanical reasoning, whereas a simple tapping task and restricting hand motions did not. These results indicate that gestures are a natural way of expressing the results of mental animation processes and suggest that spatial working memory and premotor representations are involved in mental animation. They provide no direct evidence that gestures are functional in the thought process itself, but do not rule out a role for overt gestures in this type of spatial thinking.