Cosmic ray hit frequencies in critical sites in the central nervous system.

One outstanding question to be addressed in assessing the risk of exposure to space travelers from galactic cosmic rays (GCR) outside the geomagnetosphere is to ascertain the effects of single heavy-ion hits on cells in critical regions of the central nervous system (CNS). As a first step toward this end, it is important to determine how many "hits" might be received by a neural cell in several critical CNS areas during an extended mission outside the confines of the earth's magnetic field. Critical sites in the CNS: the macula, and an interior brain point (typical of the genu, thalamus, hippocampus and nucleus basalis of Meynert) were chosen for the calculation of hit frequencies from galactic cosmic rays for a mission to Mars during solar minimum (i.e., at maximum cosmic-ray intensity). The shielding at a given position inside the body was obtained using the Computerized Anatomical Man (CAM) model, and a radiation transport code which includes nuclear fragmentation was used to calculate yearly fluences at the point of interest. Since the final Mars spacecraft shielding configuration has not yet been determined, we considered the minimum amount of aluminum required for pressure vessel-wall requirements in the living quarters of a spacecraft, and a typical duty area as a pressure vessel plus necessary equipment. The conclusions are: (1) variation of the position of the "target site" within the head plays only a small role in varying hit frequencies; (2) the average number of hits depends linearly on the cross section of the critical portion of the cell assumed in the calculation; (3) for a three-year mission to Mars at solar minimum (i.e., assuming the 1977 spectrum of galactic cosmic rays), 2% or 13% of the "critical sites" of cells in the CNS would be directly hit at least once by iron ions, depending on whether 60 micrometers2 or 471 micrometers2 is assumed as the critical cross sectional area; and (4) roughly 6 million out of some 43 million hippocampal cells and 55 thousand out of 1.8 million thalamus cell nuclei would be directly hit by iron ions at least once on such a mission for space travelers inside a simple pressure vessel. Also, roughly 20 million out of 43 million hippocampal cells and 230 thousand out of 1.8 million thalamus cell nuclei would be directly hit by one or more particles with z > or = 15 on such a mission.     

East–West Station-Keeping maneuver strategy for COMS satellite using iterative process

The first Korean multi-mission geostationary satellite, Communication, Ocean, and Meteorological Satellite (COMS) will be launched in 2010. The missions of this satellite will be Ka-band communications, ocean color monitoring, and meteorological imaging. The satellite was designed with only one solar array on the south panel. This novel configuration will keep imaging instruments on the north side from heating up. Asymmetry of the spacecraft configuration requires twice-a-day thruster-based Wheel Off-Loading (WOL) operations to keep the satellite attitude for imaging and communication. Thruster firings during the WOL operations cause the satellite orbit to change two times a day. Weekly East–West Station-Keeping (EWSK) and North–South Station-Keeping (NSSK) maneuver operations are planned for the COMS satellite in order to maintain the satellite in ±0.05° box at 128.2°E longitude.     

InSight Mars Lander Robotics Instrument Deployment System

The InSight Mars Lander is equipped with an Instrument Deployment System (IDS) and science payload with accompanying auxiliary peripherals mounted on the Lander. The InSight science payload includes a seismometer (SEIS) and Wind and Thermal Shield (WTS), heat flow probe (Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, HP³) and a precision tracking system (RISE) to measure the size and state of the core, mantle and crust of Mars. The InSight flight system is a close copy of the Mars Phoenix Lander and comprises a Lander, cruise stage, heatshield and backshell. The IDS comprises an Instrument Deployment Arm (IDA), scoop, five finger “claw” grapple, motor controller, arm-mounted Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC), lander-mounted Instrument Context Camera (ICC), and control software. IDS is responsible for the first precision robotic instrument placement and release of SEIS and HP³ on a planetary surface that will enable scientists to perform the first comprehensive surface-based geophysical investigation of Mars’ interior structure. This paper describes the design and operations of the Instrument Deployment Systems (IDS), a critical subsystem of the InSight Mars Lander necessary to achieve the primary scientific goals of the mission including robotic arm geology and physical properties (soil mechanics) investigations at the Landing site. In addition, we present test results of flight IDS Verification and Validation activities including thermal characterization and InSight 2017 Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations (ATLO), Deployment Scenario Test at Lockheed Martin, Denver, where all the flight payloads were successfully deployed with a balloon gravity offload fixture to compensate for Mars to Earth gravity.     

Practical guidelines for electro-dynamic tethers to survive from orbital debris impacts

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has proposed an active debris removal using electro-dynamic tether to reduce large space debris in the low-Earth orbit. However, a tether strand is thin but long enough to have a large area so that it is vulnerable to small particles. This vulnerability might be the weakest point of a tether system against orbital debris. In order to overcome this weakest point, a double tether system, in which two tether strands are tied together at even intervals to form equally spaced loops, has been suggested as one of the promising candidates. This paper provides a mathematical approach to estimate the survival probability of a double tether system and then apply the approach to evaluate the mission success rate of the active debris removal using electro-dynamic tether that JAXA has proposed. It can be concluded the countermeasure to get enough success rate can be obtained. The result is simulated for Advanced Earth Observing Satellite II (ADEOS-II) re-entry from 800 km sun synchronized orbit to atmosphere. The simulation shows that mission success rate over 90% can be obtained with number of loops over 1000 and 10 mm clearance between two strands.     

Observation of Plasma Instability on the Dayside Region between Magnetosheath and Ionosphere of Mars

Cosmic Research - The interaction of the solar wind with the plasma envelope of planets without their own global magnetic field has a different character than does the corresponding process near...     

Evaluation of a Geiger-mode imaging flash lidar in the approach phase for autonomous safe landing on the Moon

The imaging flash lidar has been considered as a promising sensor for the future space missions such as autonomous safe landing, spacecraft rendezvous and docking due to its ability to provide a full 3D scene with a single or multiple laser pulses. The linear-mode flash lidar has been developed and demonstrated for an autonomous safe landing on the Moon in order to provide an accurate distance measurement to the landing site and its 3D image. Yet, the Geiger-mode flash lidar has also been recognized as an emerging technology for the space missions because it is highly sensitive even to a single photon and provides the very accurate timing of photon arrival. In this study, the performance of the Geiger-mode flash lidar is simulated in the approach phase and evaluated for the autonomous landing on the Moon. Furthermore, a new statistical signal processing algorithm is proposed to remove the noise counts in order to obtain the 3D image from a sequence of laser pulses in the situation of the fast moving spacecraft. The algorithm is shown to be effective for the autonomous landing due to its ability to remove noise events under the condition of low signal-to-noise ratio and improve ranging accuracy.     

Adaptive Two-Stage Extended Kalman Filter for a Fault-Tolerant INS-GPS Loosely Coupled System

The well-known conventional Kalman filter requires an accurate system model and exact stochastic information. But in a number of situations, the system model has an unknown bias, which may degrade the performance of the Kalman filter or may cause the filter to diverge. The effect of the unknown bias may be more pronounced on the extended Kalman filter (EKF), which is a nonlinear filter. The two-stage extended Kalman filter (TEKF) with respect to this problem has been receiving considerable attention for a long time. Recently, the optimal two-stage Kalman filter (TKF) for linear stochastic systems with a constant bias or a random bias has been proposed by several researchers. A TEKF can also be similarly derived as the optimal TKF. In the case of a random bias, the TEKF assumes that the information of a random bi?s is known. But the information of a random bias is unknown or partially known in general. To solve this problem, this paper proposes an adaptive two-stage extended Kalman filter (ATEKF) using an adaptive fading EKF. To verify the performance of the proposed ATEKF, the ATEKF is applied to the INS-GPS (inertial navigation system-Global Positioning System) loosely coupled system with an unknown fault bias. The proposed ATEKF tracked/estimated the unknown bias effectively although the information about the random bias was unknown.     

Earthly environmentalism and the space exploration movement, 1960–1990: A study in irresolution

Little analysis exists of the interaction between the two most influential modern science-based social movements: space exploration and environmentalism. Since 1970 the term “Spaceship Earth” has been in common usage and the notion that the world requires careful stewardship has been acknowledged. Yet NASA had comparatively little to do with this important process of conceptual change for decades. It was meteorologists and oceanographers, among others, who established new government agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to pioneer areas like climatology. This paper examines how NASA’s view of itself as a “space” agency long underplayed Earth as a part of the Solar System. Conceptual conflicts continue, to the detriment of political and public support for space.     

Preliminary results from the second flight of CREAM

Launched from McMurdo (Antarctica) in December 2005, the balloon experiment CREAM (cosmic ray energetics and mass) collected about 15 million triggers during its second flight of 28 days. Redundant charge identification, by two pixelated silicon arrays and a time resolved pulse shaping technique from a scintillator system, allowed a clear signature of the primary nuclei. The energy was measured with a tungsten/SciFi calorimeter preceded by a graphite target. Preliminary results from the analysis of the data of the second flight are presented.