Why implementing the space option is necessary for society

For several years, specialized agencies have been searching for "new programs" that could reinvigorate the support for space activities and stop their budgets' decline of. But the same time, they have been retrenching by focusing on collecting and distributing information, putting scientific research as their core projects. On a planet soon to host a 10-billion population that will impact the biosphere's workings as never before, at a time when many governments and organizations see the virtue in the management of scarcity, musing on the origins of life and of the solar system can hardly be expected to be invested with high priority. The space option arose from the analysis of the issues confronting humanity. In reviewing the material needs of the human population in the near future, the analysis finds that the impact on the biosphere will perforce be much larger than it usually seems to be acceptable to assume.     

The role of gravity in the evolutionary emergence of multicellular complexity: Microgravity effects on arthropod development and aging

While experiments carried out in Space with isolated cells have shown that eucaryotic cells are able to sense and respond to the absence of gravity by modifying their reactions, experiments in which more complex processes have been investigated, such as Biological Systems undergoing development under Microgravity, have been surprisingly unaffected by the space environment. This can be considered a curious result since all organisms are evolutionarily adapted to the current level of the gravity force in our planet and should eventually change if this parameter will vary in a permanent manner. In fact, the small effects of the modifications in gravity on development in short term experiments may be equivalent to the difficulties in detecting the involvement of other basic physical processes such as diffusion-controled auto-organizative reactions in currently developing biological systems. An apparent exception to this lack of effect is experiments where brine shrimp dormant gastrulae directly exposed to the space environment accumulate developmental defects as a consequence of cosmic irradiation. In this article we discuss the idea that at a certain stage during the evolutionary emergence of multicellular organisms the cues laid by generic forces such as gravity were involved in the evolutionary organization of these primitive organisms. As evolution proceed, these early mechanisms may have been obscured and/or made redundant by the appearance of new internal, environment-independent biological regulatory mechanisms. On the other hand, behavioral responses that may be important, for example, in setting the life-spans of organisms may still be more readily susceptible to manipulation by external cues as experiments carried out by our group in Space and on the ground with Drosophila melanogaster indicate.     

Microgravity effects on Drosophila melanogaster development and aging: comparative analysis of the results of the Fly experiment in the Biokosmos 9 biosatellite flight.

The results are presented of the exposure of Drosophila melanogaster to microgravity conditions during a 15-day biosatellite flight, Biokosmos 9, in a joint ESA-URSS project. The experimental containers were loaded before launch with a set of Drosophila melanogaster Oregon R larvae so that imagoes were due to emerge half-way through the flight. A large number of normally developed larvae were recovered from the space-flown containers. These larvae were able to develop into normal adults confirming earlier results that Drosophila melanogaster of a wild-type constitution can develop normally in the absence of gravity. However, microgravity exposure clearly enhances the number of growing embryos laid by the flies and possibly slows down the developmental pace of the microgravity-exposed animals. Due to some problems in the experimental set-up, this slowing down needs to be verified in future experiments. No live adult that had been exposed to microgravity was recovered from the experiment, so that no life span studies could be carried out, but adult males emerged from the recovered embyros showed a slight shortening in life span and a lower performance in other experimental tests of aging. This agrees with the results of previous experiments performed by our groups.     

S@tMax—A space-based system enabling mobile IP applications in vehicles

As personal mobility increases, people spend more time in their vehicles. Furthermore, a large segment of today's workforce is part of a growing mobile service industry. This mobile society creates opportunities to increase productivity which do not yet exist. Today's commuting time could be better utilized and mobile business transactions could be more efficiently conducted, by integrating mobile IP wireless services in vehicles. By means of a direct to mobile user Internet access, and total IP services, integrated into automobiles, S@tMax services can empower the mobile business movement therefore improving productivity. This paper presents a commercial system architecture that will deliver an optimized solution for direct to mobile user Internet access, through an integration of a ground based network infrastructure, use of existing communications satellites and the development of a proprietary satellite system. As a result of a detailed systems engineering process, the architectures of the space, ground and infrastructures segments will be presented. Furthermore, the benefits of on-orbit servicing were examined in the S@tMax context. The approach proposed is considered as an important step towards enforcing main roadway IP coverage in the US, for near-continuous communications and services.     

PROBA-3 mission and the Shadow Position Sensors: Metrology measurement concept and budget

PROBA-3 is a space mission of the European Space Agency that will test, and validate metrology and control systems for autonomous formation flying of two independent satellites. PROBA-3 will operate in a High Elliptic Orbit and when approaching the apogee at 6·10⁴ Km, the two spacecraft will align to realize a giant externally occulted coronagraph named ASPIICS, with the telescope on one satellite and the external occulter on the other one, at inter-satellite distance of 144.3 m. The formation will be maintained over 6 hrs across the apogee transit and during this time different validation operations will be performed to confirm the effectiveness of the formation flying metrology concept, the metrology control systems and algorithms, and the spacecraft manoeuvring. The observation of the Sun’s Corona in the field of view [1.08;3.0]R_Sun will represent the scientific tool to confirm the formation flying alignment. In this paper, we review the mission concept and we describe the Shadow Position Sensors (SPS), one of the metrological systems designed to provide high accuracy (sub-millimetre level) absolute and relative alignment measurement of the formation flying. The metrology algorithm developed to convert the SPS measurements in lateral and longitudinal movement estimation is also described and the measurement budget summarized.     

Insects as test systems for assessing the potential role of microgravity in biological development and evolution.

Gravity and radiation are undoubtedly the two major environmental factors altered in space. Gravity is a weak force, which creates a permanent potential field acting on the mass of biological systems and their cellular components, strongly reduced in space flights. Developmental systems, particularly at very early stages, provide the larger cellular compartments known, where the effects of alterations in the size of the gravity vector on living organisms can be more effectively tested. The insects, one of the more highly evolved classes of animals in which early development occurs in a syncytial embryo, are systems particularly well suited to test these effects and the specific developmental mechanisms affected. Furthermore, they share some basic features such as small size, short life cycles, relatively high radio-resistance, etc. and show a diversity of developmental strategies and tempos advantageous in experiments of this type in space. Drosophila melanogaster, the current biological paradigm to study development, with so much genetic and evolutionary background available, is clearly the reference organism for these studies. The current evidence on the effects of the physical parameters altered in space flights on insect development indicate a surprising correlation between effects seen on the fast developing and relatively small Drosophila embryo and the more slowly developing and large Carausius morosus system. In relation to the issue of the importance of developmental and environmental constraints in biological evolution, still the missing link in current evolutionary thinking, insects and space facilities for long-term experiments could provide useful experimental settings where to critically assess how development and evolution may be interconnected. Finally, it has to be pointed out that since there are experimental data indicating a possible synergism between microgravity and space radiation, possible effects of space radiation should be taken into account in the planning and evaluation of experiments designed to test the potential role of microgravity on biological developmental and evolution.     

Moving Europe towards a more effective procurement of space-based assets

It has become essential for European states to consider a more coherent strategy in the procurement of future space assets in order to safeguard European industrial competitiveness. Space-related research programmes remain uncoordinated and separated between civil, military and commercial applications. This paper explores the present European institutional environment and the interaction between different actors involved in space procurement. New developments are underway with the establishment of the European Defence Agency and the attempt to federate existing groups and actions. Institutional users of space systems, including defence customers, often rely on the same technology. The article considers space procurement from a widespread perspective, which goes beyond sectoral boundaries. The establishment of a permanent advisory forum is suggested in order to centralise various requirements at European level and procure space assets more efficiently.     

The peculiar X-ray source in NGC 5281

Recent observations with Chandra and XMM-Newton   have shown that the X-ray source 1WGA J1346.5–6255 is associated with the Be star HD 119682, a member of the open cluster NGC 5281, and displays all the characteristics of the new class of X-ray sources known as γ$\mathrm{\gamma }$-Cas analogues. We present a detailed spectroscopic study of this open cluster, finding an age of 40 Myr and a sequence of evolved stars. These results imply that HD 119682 is a blue straggler in NGC 5281, as it is much more massive than any other cluster member, and its membership is strongly suggested by proper motion analysis. This is the second γ$\mathrm{\gamma }$-Cas analogue found to be blue straggler in an open cluster, suggesting that evolution plays a role in the formation of these systems and that a supernova explosion has not occurred in them.     

Image based control of the “PINOCCHIO” experimental free flying platform

A free floating platform is realized with a pneumatic suspension system which enables a two-dimensional test of complex space operations, such as rendezvous and docking. The platform is equipped with a IMU and actuated via cold gas thrusters. In addition, an on-board camera is used to acquire a target and its image is processed for evaluating the control actions needed to reach it. A technique for determining the relative position and velocity with respect to target using the same visual device is proposed and realized. The novel algorithms and relevant experimental results are presented. The tested accuracy of the relative navigation system is not very high, but the guidance algorithm, which is image based and has just a weak dependence on the position information, is robust enough to perform a successful maneuver. The error between the final acquired target image and the desired final target image is of the order of one pixel, notwithstanding all the testbed disturbances.     

An extensible on-board data handling software platform for pico satellites

Miniaturization techniques enable the realization of very small satellites with interesting capabilities in space science. The University of Würzburg contributed in the scope of the cubesat program with its own pico satellite UWE-1, which is in orbit since October 2005. Despite reliable and stable operation of the on-board data handling (OBDH) system during the UWE-1 mission, the successor UWE-2 will be equipped with a more sophisticated, modular and extensible OBDH system, which was designed to facilitate the further development of the UWE satellite platform. The OBDH system was designed for high reliability and stability, but with an easier extension capability. The modular structure of the new system thus supports potential transfer to other satellite platforms.