Disk Evolution and the Fate of Water

Space Science Reviews - We review the general theoretical concepts and observational constraints on the distribution and evolution of water vapor and ice in protoplanetary disks, with a focus on...     

Protostellar Disk Formation and Early Evolution

This contribution describes the formation of circumstellar disks and their earliest evolutionary phases when self-gravity in the disk plays a crucial role in eliciting the transport of mass and angular momentum. We first discuss the formation of protostellar disks within the context of analytic infall-collapse solutions. We then discuss our efforts to understand the behavior of the newly formed disks. Our specific approach consists of performing a detailed analysis of a simplified model disk which is susceptible to the growth of a spiral instability. Using a combination of numerical simulation and semi-analytic analysis, we show how the dramatic early phase of mass and angular momentum transport in the disk can be explained by a second-order nonlinear process involving self-interaction of a dominant two-armed spiral mode. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

COSAC onboard Rosetta: a bioastronomy experiment for the short-period comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

The COSAC (Cometary Sampling and Composition Experiment) onboard the Rosetta mission is a combined gas chromatograph (GC)-mass spectrometer (MS). It is situated on Philae, the lander of the mission, which is intended to land on the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov- Gerasimenko. The purpose of the experiment is to analyze the volatile fraction of soil samples retrieved by a drill. For investigation, the samples will be pyrolysed, and the emanating gases fed into a GC, into an MS, or the combination of both. In the first part of this paper, the bioastronomical relevance of such measurements is outlined. In the second part the details of the hardware and its performance are described.     

Artificial gravity--head movements during short-radius centrifugation: influence of cognitive effects

Short-radius centrifugation is a potential countermeasure against the effects of prolonged weightlessness. Head movements in a rotating environment, however, induce serious side effects: inappropriate vestibular ocular reflexes (VOR), body-tilt illusions and motion sickness induced by cross-coupled accelerations on a rotating platform. These are well predicted by a semicircular canal model. The present study investigates cognitive effects on the inappropriate VOR and the illusory sensations experienced by subjects rotating on a short-radius centrifuge (SRC). Subjects (N=19) were placed supine on a rotating horizontal bed with their head at the center of rotation. To investigate the extent to which they could control their sensations voluntarily, subjects were asked alternatively to "fight" (i.e. to try to resist and suppress) those sensations, or to "go" with (i.e. try to enhance or, at least, acquiesce in) them. The only significant effect on the VOR of this cognitive intervention was to diminish the time constant characterizing the decay of the nystagmus in subjects who had performed the "go" (rather than the "fight") trials. However, illusory sensations, as measured by reported subjective intensities, were significantly less intense during the "fight" than during the "go" trials. These measurements also verified an asymmetry in illusory sensation known from earlier experiments: the illusory sensations are greater when the head is rotated from right ear down (RED) to nose up (NU) posture than from NU to RED. The subjects habituated, modestly, to the rotation between their first and second sequences of trials, but showed no better (or worse) suppression of illusory sensations thereafter. No significant difference in habituation was observed between the "fight" and "go" trials.     

Decentralized formation pose estimation for spacecraft swarms

For spacecraft swarms, the multi-agent localization algorithm must scale well with the number of spacecraft and adapt to time-varying communication and relative sensing networks. In this paper, we present a decentralized, scalable algorithm for swarm localization, called the Decentralized Pose Estimation (DPE) algorithm. The DPE considers both communication and relative sensing graphs and defines an observable local formation. Each spacecraft jointly localizes its local subset of spacecraft using direct and communicated measurements. Since the algorithm is local, the algorithm complexity does not grow with the number of spacecraft in the swarm. As part of the DPE, we present the Swarm Reference Frame Estimation (SRFE) algorithm, a distributed consensus algorithm to co-estimate a common Local-Vertical, Local-Horizontal (LVLH) frame. The DPE combined with the SRFE provides a scalable, fully-decentralized navigation solution that can be used for swarm control and motion planning. Numerical simulations and experiments using Caltech’s robotic spacecraft simulators are presented to validate the effectiveness and scalability of the DPE algorithm.     

Mental Object Rotation and Egocentric Body Transformation: Two Dissociable Processes?

An important question in studies on mental rotation is whether the mental object rotation and the egocentric body transformation rely on dissociable mechanisms. We tested non-dancers and professional dancers as experts in the mental object rotation task (MORT, 3D-cubes used by Shepard & Metzler, 1971) and the mental body transformation task (MBRT, line drawings of human bodies similar to those used by Parsons, 1987). The cubes and body figures were presented in exactly the same rotation conditions; in the picture plane, 0 degree, 45 degrees, 90 degrees, 135 degrees, and 180 degrees, and in combination with a rotation in depth, 0 degree (the stimuli are rotated in the picture plane only) and 180 degrees. We could replicate the linear increase in RT with increasing angle for the cubes whereas the RT for rotated body figures increased for not depth-rotated bodies only (back view). Though, the RTs for inverted body figures were faster when they were rotated in depth (front view) compared to when they were rotated in the picture plane only (back view). This finding suggests that participants use different strategies depending on the perceived orientation of the stimulus. The results indicate impaired performance in the MORT for the experts.     

用于直升机振动控制的主动调谐式吸振器研究

振动问题是直升机设计中的难题,会导致机体结构疲劳、舒适性降低和高噪声等问题。通常的单桨叶控制方案由于受压电驱动器机电性能的限制而难以实现。智能弹簧是一种采用单桨叶控制原理的主动调谐式吸振器,它通过压电驱动器自适应控制桨叶根部的结构阻抗,达到振动控制目的。建立了智能弹簧的简化模型,对其谐波响应控制特性进行研究;采用频率分析和数字信号合成技术产生参考信号,在DSP平台上设计自适应陷波算法对智能弹簧驱动器组件进行控制;模拟和风洞实验结果均表明智能弹簧能够在较宽频率范围内对桨叶的谐波响应进行有效控制,验证了通过主动阻抗控制实现直升机桨叶振动控制的可行性。     

Radiance calibration of CRISTA-NF

The CRISTA-NF instrument is the airborne version of the CRISTA satellite infrared limb sounder. It has been successfully flown on the Geophysica research airplane during a test campaign in July 2005, during the SCOUT-O3 Tropical Aircraft Campaign in November/December 2005 and during the AMMA campaign in August 2006. Radiance calibrations of the airborne instrument are more complex compared to the satellite instrument because the vacuum shell of CRISTA-NF is confined by a ZnSe (zinc–selenide) window and the detectors can thermally drift during measurement flights. By comprehensive radiance calibrations with a blackbody source the window’s emissivity and transmissivity are determined and the dependence of the instrument sensitivity on the detector temperature is characterized. Taking these effects into account, the remaining radiance error of the calibration is smaller than 3%.     

A methodology for simulating 2D shock-induced dynamic stall at flight test-based fluctuating freestream

A comprehensive methodology for simulating 2 D dynamic stall at fluctuating freestream is proposed in this paper.2 D CFD simulation of a SC1095 airfoil exposed to a fluctuating freestream of Mach number 0.537 ± 0.205 and Reynolds number 6.1 × 10~6(based on the mean Mach number) and undergoing a 10° ± 10° pitch oscillation with a frequency of 4.25 Hz was conducted.These conditions were selected to be representative of the flow experienced by a helicopter rotor airfoil section in a real-life fast forward flight.Both constant freestream dynamic stall as well as fluctuating freestream dynamic stall simulations were conducted and compared.The methodology was carefully validated with experimental data for both transonic flow and dynamic stall under fluctuating freestream.Overall, the results suggest that the fluctuating freestream alters the dynamic stall mechanism documented for constant freestream in a major way, emphasizing that inclusion of this effect in the prediction of dynamic stall related rotor loads is imperative for rotor performance analysis and blades design.