Modelling and simulation of the space mission MICROSCOPE

MICROSCOPE is a French space mission for testing the weak equivalence principle (WEP). The mission goal is the determination of the Eötvös parameter $\eta$ with an accuracy of 10^?15. The French space agency CNES is responsible for the satellite which is developed and produced within the Myriade series. The satellite's payload T-SAGE (Twin Space Accelerometer for Gravitation Experimentation) is developed and built by the French institute ONERA. It consists of two high-precision capacitive differential accelerometers. One accelerometer is used as reference sensor with two test masses of platinum, the science sensor contains a platinum and a titanium proof mass. The detection of the test mass movement and their control is done via a complex electrode system. As a member of the MICROSCOPE performance team, the German department ZARM will be involved in the data analysis of the MICROSCOPE mission. For this purpose, mission simulations and the preparation of the mission data evaluation in close cooperation with the French partners CNES, ONERA and OCA are realised. The development status of the simulation tool which will represent the complex spacecraft dynamics and all error sources in order to design and test data reduction procedures is presented and some features are discussed in detail.     

GRACE accelerometer calibration by high precision non-gravitational force modeling

The precise modeling and knowledge of non-gravitational forces acting on satellites is of big interest to many scientific tasks and missions. Since 2002, the twin GRACE satellites have measured these forces in a low Earth orbit with highly precise accelerometers, for about 15?years. Besides the significance for the GRACE mission, these measurement data allow the evaluation of modeling approaches and the improvement of force models. Unfortunately, before any scientific usage, the accelerometer measurements need to be calibrated, namely scale factor and bias have to be regularly estimated.In this study we demonstrate an accelerometer calibration approach, solely based on high precision non-gravitational force modeling without any use of empirically or stochastically estimated parameters, using our in-house developed satellite simulation tool XHPS. The aim of this work is twofold, first we use the accelerometer data and the residuals resulting from the calibration to quantitatively analyze and validate different non-gravitational force model approaches. In a second step, we compare the calibration results to three different calibration methods from different authors, based on gravity field recovery, GPS-based precise orbit determination, and based on modeled accelerations.We consider atmospheric drag forces and winds, as well as radiation forces due to solar radiation pressure, albedo, Earth infrared and thermal radiation (TRP) of the satellite itself. For TRP, we investigate different transient temperature calculation approaches for the satellite surfaces with absorbed power from the aforementioned radiation sources. A detailed finite element model of the satellite is utilized for every force, considering orientation, material properties and shadowing conditions for each element.For cross-track and radial direction, which are mainly affected by the radiative forces, our calibration residuals are quite small when drag is not super dominant (1–3?$\text{nm}/{\text{s}}^2$ for total accelerations around $\pm$50?$\text{nm}/{\text{s}}^2$). For these directions the calibration seems to perform better than the other compared methods, where some bigger differences were found. For the drag dominated along-track direction it is vice versa, here our method is not sensitive enough because the difference between modeled and measured drag is bigger (e.g. residuals around 10?$\text{nm}/{\text{s}}^2$ for total accelerations around $\pm$70?$\text{nm}/{\text{s}}^2$ for low solar activity). In along-track direction the orbit determination based methods are more sensitive and produce more reliable results. Results for the complete GRACE mission time span from 2003 to 2017 are shown, covering different seasonal environmental conditions.     

Modelling of the MICROSCOPE Mission

The French space mission MICROSCOPE aims at testing the Equivalence Principle (EP) up to an accuracy of 10^?15. The experiment will be carried out on a satellite which is developed and produced within the CNES Myriade series. The measuring accuracy will be achieved by means of two high-precision capacitive differential accelerometers that are built by the French institute ONERA, see Touboul and Rodrigues (Class. Quantum Gravity 18:2487–2498, 2001). At ZARM, which is a member of the science team, the data evaluation process is prepared. Therefore, a comprehensive simulation of the real system including the science signal and all error sources is built for the development and testing of data reduction and data analysis algorithms to extract the EP violation signal. Currently, the ZARM Drag-Free simulator, a tool to support mission modelling, is adapted for the MICROSCOPE mission in order to simulate test mass and satellite dynamics. Models of environmental disturbances like solar radiation pressure are considered, also. Additionally, detailed modelling of the on-board capacitive sensors is done. The actual status of the mission modelling will be presented. Particularly, the modelling of disturbances forces will be discussed in detail.     

热处理对粉末冶金TiAl双态组织与性能的影响

对粉末冶金制备的Ti-46Al-2Cr-2Nb-(B,W)(at%)合金在1 280 ℃进行直接热处理,通过3种不同冷却速度获得了不同的双态组织.当冷却速度为50℃/min时,组织中的α晶粒通过析出γ片形成片层团,获得主要由片层团和γ相组成的双态组织,组织中过高片层体积分数导致拉伸延长率不高;而冷却速度为10℃/min 和5℃/min时,形成了主要由α₂晶粒和γ相组成的双相组织,α₂晶粒的存在进一步降低了材料室温延长率.