Engineering concepts for inflatable Mars surface greenhouses.

A major challenge of designing a bioregenerative life support system for Mars is the reduction of the mass, volume, power, thermal and crew-time requirements. Structural mass of the greenhouse could be saved by operating the greenhouse at low atmospheric pressure. This paper investigates the feasibility of this concept. The method of equivalent system mass is used to compare greenhouses operated at high atmospheric pressure to greenhouses operated at low pressure for three different lighting methods: natural, artificial and hybrid lighting.     

KuaFu Mission

The KuaFu mission-Space Storms, Aurora and Space Weather Explorer-is an "L1+Polar" triple satellite project composed of three spacecraft: KuaFu-A will be located at L1 and have instruments to observe solar EUV and FUV emissions, and white-light Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), and to measure radio waves, the local plasma and magnetic field,and high-energy particles. KuaFuB1 and KuaFu- B2 will bein polar orbits chosen to facilitate continuous 24 hours a day observation of the north polar Aurora Oval. The KuaFu mission is designed to observe the complete chain of disturbances from the solar atmosphere to geospace, including solar flares, CMEs, interplanetary clouds, shock waves, and their geo-effects, such as magnetospheric sub-storms and magnetic storms, and auroral activities. The mission may start at the next solar maximum (launch in about 2012), and with an initial mission lifetime of two to three years. KuaFu data will be used for the scientific study of space weather phenomena, and will be used for space weather monitoring and forecast purposes. The overall mission design, instrument complement, and incorporation of recent technologies will target new fundamental science, advance our understanding of the physical processes underlying space weather, and raise the standard of end-to-end monitoring of the Sun-Earth system.     

Observations of the Sun at Vacuum- Ultraviolet Wavelengths from Space. Part I: Concepts and Instrumentation

Space Science Reviews - Studies of the high-temperature solar atmosphere are to a large extent based on spectroscopic observations of emission lines and continuum radiation in the...     

Helios: Evolution of Distribution Functions 0.3–1 AU

The radial evolution of the velocity distribution functions of the protons, electrons and ions, as they were measured during the Helios mission in the solar wind between 0.3 and 1.0 AU, is discussed and analysed. Emphasis is placed on the detailed plasma measurements, and on the non-thermal features of the particles and the kinetic processes they undergo in the expanding solar wind. As the plasma is multi-component and nonuniform, complexity prevails and the observed distributions exhibit, owing to their low number densities, significant deviations from local thermal equilibrium, and reveal such suprathermal particles as the strahl electrons, as well as ion beams and temperature anisotropies. The distribution functions still carry imprints of their solar boundaries that are reflected locally, but also have ample free energy driving in situ plasma instabilities which are triggered and modulated by wave-particle interactions. The ion temperatures and their anisotropies and the non-adiabatic radial evolution of the solar wind internal energy are discussed in detail.     

Observations of the Sun at Vacuum-Ultraviolet Wavelengths from Space. Part II: Results and Interpretations

In Part I of this review, the concepts of solar vacuum-ultraviolet (VUV) observations were outlined together with a discussion of the space instrumentation used for the investigations. A section on spectroradiometry provided some quantitative results on the solar VUV radiation without considering any details of the solar phenomena leading to the radiation. Here, in Part II, we present solar VUV observations over the last decades and their interpretations in terms of the plasma processes and the parameters of the solar atmosphere, with emphasis on the spatial and thermal structures of the chromosphere, transition region and corona of the quiet Sun. In addition, observations of active regions, solar flares and prominences are included as well as of small-scale events. Special sections are devoted to the elemental composition of the solar atmosphere and theoretical considerations on the heating of the corona and the generation of the solar wind.