How to evidence Primitive Life on an exo-Planet? — The DARWIN project

We report the concept of an IR observatory, with interferometric rejection, to search for Primitive Life on an extra-Solar Planet which has been proposed to the European Space Agency.     

液氧/煤油发动机地面试验故障紧急关机系统研制

论述了液氧／煤油发动机研制地面试车中，出现故障时所采用的紧急关机系统的原理和系统结构、设计程序、设计指标、关机判断准则、验证及应用等。     

Magnetic Field Amplification in Galaxy Clusters and Its Simulation

We review the present theoretical and numerical understanding of magnetic field amplification in cosmic large-scale structure, on length scales of galaxy clusters and beyond. Structure formation drives compression and turbulence, which amplify tiny magnetic seed fields to the microGauss values that are observed in the intracluster medium. This process is intimately connected to the properties of turbulence and the microphysics of the intra-cluster medium. Additional roles are played by merger induced shocks that sweep through the intra-cluster medium and motions induced by sloshing cool cores. The accurate simulation of magnetic field amplification in clusters still poses a serious challenge for simulations of cosmological structure formation. We review the current literature on cosmological simulations that include magnetic fields and outline theoretical as well as numerical challenges.     

Optimal design of composite lattice shell structures for aerospace applications

An optimization method for composite lattice shell structures under axially compressive loads is proposed aiming at the preliminary design. The method implements and improves some previous results of the fully analytical approach which is currently adopted at the state-of-the-art. The fully analytical approach provides the minimum mass solution under buckling and strength constraints, irrespective of other possible design limitations, such as, shell stiffness constraints. As a consequence, the minimum mass solution turns out to be satisfactory whereas other requirements are absent or automatically achieved but, on the contrary, it can drive the final preliminary configuration far from the real optimum.The proposed method implements numerical minimization allowing the designer to easily handle suboptimal configurations which are located in the vicinity of the minimum mass solution. When stiffness requirement is present (as in most cases) the benefit of this approach – in terms of weight saving with respect to the analytical design – is finally shown with a practical example.     

Diagnosing the Neutral Interstellar Gas Flow at 1 AU with IBEX-Lo

Every year in fall and spring the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) will observe directly the interstellar gas flow at 1 AU over periods of several months. The IBEX-Lo sensor employs a powerful triple time-of-flight mass spectrometer. It can distinguish and image the O and He flow distributions in the northern fall and spring, making use of sensor viewing perpendicular to the Sun-pointing spin axis. To effectively image the narrow flow distributions IBEX-Lo has a high angular resolution quadrant in its collimator. This quadrant is employed selectively for the interstellar gas flow viewing in the spring by electrostatically shutting off the remainder of the aperture. The operational scenarios, the expected data, and the necessary modeling to extract the interstellar parameters and the conditions in the heliospheric boundary are described. The combination of two key interstellar species will facilitate a direct comparison of the pristine interstellar flow, represented by He, which has not been altered in the heliospheric boundary region, with a flow that is processed in the outer heliosheath, represented by O. The O flow distribution consists of a depleted pristine component and decelerated and heated neutrals. Extracting the latter so-called secondary component of interstellar neutrals will provide quantitative constraints for several important parameters of the heliosheath interaction in current global heliospheric models. Finding the fraction and width of the secondary component yields an independent value for the global filtration factor of species, such as O and H. Thus far filtration can only be inferred, barring observations in the local interstellar cloud proper. The direction of the secondary component will provide independent information on the interstellar magnetic field strength and orientation, which has been inferred from SOHO SWAN Ly-α backscattering observations and the two Voyager crossings of the termination shock.