The Rolis Experiment on the Rosetta Lander

ROLIS (Rosetta Lander Imaging System) is one of the two imaging systems carried by Rosetta’s Lander Philae, successfully launched to comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko in March 2004. Consisting of a highly-miniaturized CCD camera, ROLIS will operate as a descent imager, acquiring imagery of the landing site with increasing spatial resolution. After touchdown ROLIS will focus at an object distance of 30 cm, taking pictures of the comet’s surface below the Lander. Multispectral imaging is achieved through an illumination device consisting of four arrays of monochromatic light emitting diodes working in the 470, 530, 640 and 870 nm spectral bands. The drill sample sites, as well as the Alpha X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) target locations will be imaged to provide context for the measurements performed by the in situ analyzers. After the drilling operation, the borehole will be inspected to study its morphology and to search for stratification. Taking advantage of the Lander’s rotation capability, stereo image pairs will be acquired, which will facilitate the mapping and identification of surface structures.     

Development of a high pressure-differential turbine blade cooling system

A convective-film system of high pressure-differential turbine blade cooling is presented. The results of calculating the thermal-hydraulic blade state using the KW3D software are given.     

Theoretical studies of shock-initiated detonations

The dynamics of shock propagation have been studied theoretically for a variety of two-dimensional lattices. The approach used is based on molecular dynamics and hinges on the exact numerical solution by computer of the equations of motion for the individual atoms or molecules in each lattice. Shocks have been launched into the lattices under study by methods designed to simulate flyer-plate impact. Two different interatomic potentials have been used, one endothermic and one net-exothermic. For both types of potential, a shock launched at one side of the lattice will spall a group of atoms off the other side. However, the subsequent behavior of the two types of lattice is very different. For endothermic potentials, after the initial atomic spall, the residual lattice is quiescent with little further activity. For net-exothermic potentials, the initial atomic spall injects additional energy into the system in such a manner that subsequently further spall occurs at both sides. Once this new spall is initiated, it leads rapidly to further bond breaking and explosive disintegration of the system.     

Gamma-ray Lines From cr Source Regions

Gamma-ray lines arise from radioactivities produced in nucleosynthesis sites, and from deexcitation of nuclei which have been activated through energetic particle collisions. Since the bulk of nucleosynthesis activity relates to activities inside massive stars, both these processes are related to the likely sources of cosmic rays: Supernova remnants show radioactivity afterglows at time scales which bracket their likely phases of relevance as CR acceleration sites; ²⁶Al radioactivity may trace regions of intense wind interactions from groups of massive stars, and also encode information about the possible injection of matter into CR acceleration environments through interstellar dust grains. The status of -ray line measurements after the Compton Observatory mission is presented, with models and interpretations of current results, and the prospects of upcoming measurements.     

MLS: keeping pace with the future

It is argued that the instrument landing system (ILS) is now at its operational limit in terms of radio frequency availability, approach flexibility, and technology. The operational requirements for a microwave landing system (MLS), which will overcome key limitations of the ILS and provide growth to meet future requirements of precision landing systems, are discussed, John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport and LaGuardia Airport in New York City are discussed as examples to demonstrate the capabilities of MLS     

Synthetic aperture radar image formation from compressed data usinga new computation technique

A convolution technique is proposed that allows direct reconstruction of the processed synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) image from the digitally-sampled, block-encoded raw data. This computational compression technique reduces the number of arithmetic operations from that required by fast Fourier transform (FFT) convolution for SAR processing. SAR phase histories are block encoded and directly processed into an image where only arithmetic additions are required for the processing. For SAR data previously block encoded, the processing time is reduced by a factor of 100 or more. A speed-up of three times over SAR processing by FET convolution has been demonstrated when both computation of the block encoding and subsequent direct processing are included in the time. SAR image quality measurements for a method of block encoding called vector quantization at compression ration ranging from 5:1 to 50:1 show image degradation proportional to the compression ratio. For a 5:1 compression radio, image quality measurements show minimal degradation     

Periodic or random acceleration in solar flares?

The issue whether acceleration and injection of electron beams is coherently modulated by a single quasi-periodic source, or whether the injection is driven by a stochastic process in time or (eventually fragmented) in space, is investigated by menas of a periodicity analysis of metric type III bursts.We analyze 260 continuous type III groups observed byIkarus (ETH Zurich) in the frequency range of 100–500 MHz during 359 solar flares with simultaneous 25 keV hard X-ray emission, in the years 1980–1983. Pulse periods have been measured between 0.5 and 10 s, and can be described by an exponential distribution, i.e.N(P) e ^–P/1.0s. We measure the mean periodP and its standard deviation p in each type III group, and quantify the degree of periodicity by the dimensionless parameter p/P. The representative sample of 260 type III burst groups shows a mean periodicity of p/P=0.37±0.12, while Monte-Carlo simulations of an equivalent set of truly random time series show a distinctly different value of p/P=0.93±0.26. This result suggests that the injection of electron beams is periodically modulated by a particle acceleration source which is either compact or has a global organization on a time scale of seconds.     

Observations of fragmented energy release

Energy release into coronal plasmas is observable in the forms of heating and acceleration. In flares and active stars, heating and acceleration have been found to be related as indicated by an approximately constant ratio of microwave (synchrotron) and soft X-ray (thermal) emission. The discovery suggests a flare-like heating process for the quiescent coronae of active stars.The energy release in solar flares involves several time scales: (i) The largest is the rate of homologous flares in an active region of the order of one per five hours. (ii) Hard X-ray andH emissions suggest a total flare duration of ten minutes, (iii) with individual episodes of contiguous acceleration of one minute. (iv) Elementary hard X-ray peaks have 5–10 s duration, corresponding to groups of beams observable as type III radio bursts. (v) The effective injection time of these beams is of the order 0.1 s. (vi) The smaller time scale is observed in narrowband radio spikes in the 0.2–8 GHz range with durations of a few times 0.01 s.     

Efficient target tracking using dynamic programming

A dynamic programming (DP) algorithm has been developed for the detection and tracking of subpixel-sized, low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) targets observed by side-or forward-looking imaging sensors. A distinguishing feature of this approach is that target detection and tracking are combined into a single optimization procedure that takes into account statistical models of target motion, background noise, and clutter. Current work has led to a number of technical innovations that improve the performance and efficiency of the DP tracking algorithm, including the development of a new track scoring function, and an extension to the basic DP algorithm that reduces computation requirements by over an order of magnitude. A prototype infrared (IR) target tracking system incorporating these enhancements has been implemented for a step-starting IR camera application. Sensitivity improvements of several decibels over conventional sequential detection and tracking algorithms were realized     

The Mars Odyssey Gamma-Ray Spectrometer Instrument Suite

The Mars Odyssey Gamma-Ray Spectrometer is a suite of three different instruments, a gamma subsystem (GS), a neutron spectrometer, and a high-energy neutron detector, working together to collect data that will permit the mapping of elemental concentrations on the surface of Mars. The instruments are complimentary in that the neutron instruments have greater sensitivity to low amounts of hydrogen, but their signals saturate as the hydrogen content gets high. The hydrogen signal in the GS, on the other hand, does not saturate at high hydrogen contents and is sensitive to small differences in hydrogen content even when hydrogen is very abundant. The hydrogen signal in the neutron instruments and the GS have a different dependence on depth, and thus by combining both data sets we can infer not only the amount of hydrogen, but constrain its distribution with depth. In addition to hydrogen, the GS determines the abundances of several other elements. The instruments, the basis of the technique, and the data processing requirements are described as are some expected applications of the data to scientific problems.