The International DORIS Service (IDS): Toward maturity

DORIS is one of the four space-geodetic techniques participating in the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS), particularly to maintain and disseminate the Terrestrial Reference Frame as determined by International Earth rotation and Reference frame Service (IERS). A few years ago, under the umbrella of the International Association of Geodesy, a DORIS International Service (IDS) was created in order to foster international cooperation and to provide new scientific products. This paper addresses the organizational aspects of the IDS and presents some recent DORIS scientific results. It is for the first time that, in preparation of the ITRF2008, seven Analysis Centers (AC’s) contributed to derive long-term time series of DORIS stations positions. These solutions were then combined into a homogeneous time series IDS-2 for which a precision of less than 10 mm was obtained. Orbit comparisons between the various AC’s showed an excellent agreement in the radial component, both for the SPOT satellites (e.g. 0.5–2.1 cm RMS for SPOT-2) and Envisat (0.9–2.1 cm RMS), using different software packages, models, corrections and analysis strategies. There is now a wide international participation within IDS that should lead to future improvements in DORIS analysis strategies and DORIS-derived geodetic products.     

Radar Imaging of Mercury

Earth-based radar has been one of the few, and one of the most important, sources of new information about Mercury during the three decades since the Mariner 10 encounters. The emphasis during the past 15 years has been on full-disk, dual-polarization imaging of the planet, an effort that has been facilitated by the development of novel radar techniques and by improvements in radar systems. Probably the most important result of the imaging work has been the discovery and mapping of radar-bright features at the poles. The radar scattering properties of these features, and their confinement to permanently shaded crater floors, is consistent with volume backscatter from a low-loss volatile such as clean water ice. Questions remain, however, regarding the source and long-term stability of the putative ice, which underscores the need for independent confirmation by other observational methods. Radar images of the non-polar regions have also revealed a plethora of bright features, most of which are associated with fresh craters and their ejecta. Several very large impact features, with rays and other bright ejecta spreading over distances of 1,000 km or more, have been traced to source craters with diameters of 80–125 km. Among these large rayed features are some whose relative faintness suggests that they are being observed in an intermediate stage of degradation. Less extended ray/ejecta features have been found for some of the freshest medium-size craters such as Kuiper and Degas. Much more common are smaller (<40 km diameter) fresh craters showing bright rim-rings but little or no ray structure. These smaller radar-bright craters are particularly common over the H-7 quadrangle. Diffuse areas of enhanced depolarized brightness have been found in the smooth plains, including the circum-Caloris planitiae and Tolstoj Basin. This is an interesting finding, as it is the reverse of the albedo contrast seen between the radar-dark maria and the radar-bright cratered highlands on the Moon.     

A Geosynchronous Orbit Search Strategy

Since more than 10 years there is evidence that small-size space debris is accumulating in the geosynchronous orbit (GEO), probably as the result of breakups. Two break-ups have been reported in GEO. The 1978 break-up of an EKRAN 2 satellite, SSN 10365, was identified in 1992, and in 1992 a Titan 3C Transtage, SSN 3432, break-up produced at least twenty observable pieces. Subsequently several nations performed optical surveys of the GEO region in the form of independent observation campaigns. Such surveys suffer from the fact that the field of view of optical telescopes is small compared with the total area covered by the GEO ring. As a consequence only a small volume of the orbital element-magnitude-space is covered by each individual survey. Results from these surveys are thus affected by observational biases and therefore difficult to compare. This paper describes the development of a common search strategy to overcome these limitations. The strategy optimizes the sampling for objects in orbits similar to the orbits of the known GEO population but does not exclude the detection of objects with other orbital planes. A properly designed common search strategy clearly eases the comparison of results from different groups and the extrapolation from the sparse (biased) samples to the entire GEO environment.     

电磁流体动力驱动流体搅拌混合器特性研究

对小型电磁流体动力搅拌混合器的特性进行了理论分析和实验研究.该小型电磁动力混合器由聚碳酸脂和黄铜采用常规机械加工方法加工而成.研究采用的流体为氯化钠水溶液.为了观察流体的搅拌混合运动,在流体中加入微量微细玻璃珠作为示踪粒子.采用显微观测及图像采集技术记录流体的搅拌混合过程,用数字图像处理技术对流体速度场进行分析.建立了搅拌混合器的理论模型,并对其动力特性进行了数值分析,理论结果与实验结果相吻合.该小型电磁动力混合器已应用于微管道流动的混合控制并可应用于其它微流体控制系统中.     

Hr 7308: A unique Cepheid

Numerical models of Cepheids have been computed with a range of effective temperatures and compositions. The amplitudes increase if the helium abundance increases or if the effective temperature decreases. The latter effect is contrary to observational data. The models also exhibit velocity amplitudes which are much lower than those observed.