A balloon-borne very long baseline interferometry experiment in the stratosphere: Systems design and developments

The balloon-borne very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) experiment is a technical feasibility study for performing radio interferometry in the stratosphere. The flight model has been developed. A balloon-borne VLBI station will be launched to establish interferometric fringes with ground-based VLBI stations distributed over the Japanese islands at an observing frequency of approximately 20?GHz as the first step. This paper describes the system design and development of a series of observing instruments and bus systems. In addition to the advantages of avoiding the atmospheric effects of absorption and fluctuation in high frequency radio observation, the mobility of a station can improve the sampling coverage (“uv-coverage”) by increasing the number of baselines by the number of ground-based counterparts for each observation day. This benefit cannot be obtained with conventional arrays that solely comprise ground-based stations. The balloon-borne VLBI can contribute to a future progress of research fields such as black holes by direct imaging.     

Spaceports and new industrialized areas in the Pacific Basin

This article analyses the rapid economic advancement of the Pacific Basin area, and discusses its future potential. Common efforts in space utilization can integrate the area, and overcome the wide diversity of political, economic and social structures. Aspects of communications, space remote sensing and space-based materials processing are examined and forecasts are made for the future role of the Pacific Basin in these areas. A populated Orbital Space City will be necessary to further space utilization. To support future activities in space, a Pacific Spaceport and a Pacific Space Centre are proposed, which would lead to the development of several ‘New Industrialized Areas’ in the age of the Solar Power Satellite. Estimates are made of the amount of electricity which will be required.     

Hydrothermal systems in small ocean planets

We examine means for driving hydrothermal activity in extraterrestrial oceans on planets and satellites of less than one Earth mass, with implications for sustaining a low level of biological activity over geological timescales. Assuming ocean planets have olivine-dominated lithospheres, a model for cooling-induced thermal cracking shows how variation in planet size and internal thermal energy may drive variation in the dominant type of hydrothermal system-for example, high or low temperature system or chemically driven system. As radiogenic heating diminishes over time, progressive exposure of new rock continues to the current epoch. Where fluid-rock interactions propagate slowly into a deep brittle layer, thermal energy from serpentinization may be the primary cause of hydrothermal activity in small ocean planets. We show that the time-varying hydrostatic head of a tidally forced ice shell may drive hydrothermal fluid flow through the seafloor, which can generate moderate but potentially important heat through viscous interaction with the matrix of porous seafloor rock. Considering all presently known potential ocean planets-Mars, a number of icy satellites, Pluto, and other trans-neptunian objects-and applying Earth-like material properties and cooling rates, we find depths of circulation are more than an order of magnitude greater than in Earth. In Europa and Enceladus, tidal flexing may drive hydrothermal circulation and, in Europa, may generate heat on the same order as present-day radiogenic heat flux at Earth's surface. In all objects, progressive serpentinization generates heat on a globally averaged basis at a fraction of a percent of present-day radiogenic heating and hydrogen is produced at rates between 10(9) and 10(10) molecules cm(2) s(1).     

Fuel-optimal eccentricities for precise formation keeping of spacecraft on Keplerian orbits

In this paper, the problem of precise relative position keeping associated with the formation flying of two spacecraft is discussed. Taking into account of the applications to astronomic observation, the relative position of spacecraft is controlled to be precisely retained on a part of an orbit rather than on the entire orbit; moreover, the relative position is retained in the inertial coordinates rather than in the local vertical local horizontal coordinates. The fuel-optimal eccentricities are computed for each length of control time. Then, it is shown that the fuel-optimal eccentricity is close to 1 when the control time is shorter than approximately 90% of the orbit period; on the contrary, the fuel-optimal eccentricity is in the neighborhood of 0 when the control time is close to the orbit period. Moreover, several analytic expressions including the propellant consumptions at the eccentricities of 0 and 1 are obtained.     

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.     

Single-event performance of COTS-based MPU under flare and nonflare conditions

We investigated the in-orbit performance of a high-performance on-board computer developed with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology in terms of its performance during the occurrence of single event effects. The processor worked and performed successfully both under normal and under solar flare conditions in 800 km altitude polar orbit. During a solar flare, the occurrence of single events increased by a factor of more than four compared with normal conditions. The area where single events occurred during the solar flare spread to the polar region, whereas normally they are limited to the region of South-Atlantic anomalies (SAA). Our results suggest that the performance of our COTS processor is sufficient for future space applications.     

Evidence that far-infrared radiation promotes growth of Xenopus laevis.

In most ectotherms, environmental temperature has differential effects on growth and differentiation. For example, amphibian size at maturity decreases with increasing temperature. To address how radiant heat in the form of far-infrared radiation (FIR) may affect development of the aquatic ectotherm Xenopus laevis, we continuously irradiated swimming larvae as they developed into young adults. Here we report evidence that FIR promotes growth of these organisms in an aqueous environment.     

Robot-aided remote inspection experiment on STS-85

The results are presented for the robot-aided spacecraft inspection experiments using a flaw detection algorithm called multi-images overcast (MIO), which were conducted as an extension of NASDA's Manipulator Flight Demonstration mission installed on space shuttle mission STS-85. These experiments are the first step towards research and development of the Orbital Maintenance System to support space systems by inspecting satellites, deorbiting useless satellites, and repairing satellites in orbit to utilize space systems effectively and reliably.     

Dust Properties in the Local Interstellar Medium

Ulysses measurements yield reliable in-situdetection of large dust particles which stem from the interstellar medium (ISM) and which are not observed in interstellar extinction data. Both current models of large grains in the ISM: core-mantle grains as well as composite grains, are in agreement with dust properties implied by the Ulysses results. However, the size of particles detected by Ulysses still exceeds the size of the large grains that are predicted for the ISM. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.