Technology assessment in space activities: status and outlook

Space technology is not only a matter for engineers. In various ways, political authorities and other sections of society are interested in space activities. An of space activities provides a scientific basis on which to tender guidance and advice to decision makers. The authors discuss the growing use of technology assessment in the space field with particular reference to German activities and analyse why it will become more important in the future.     

Decadal variability of tropical Pacific temperature in relation to solar cycles

We use the 8-year long satellite temperature data (2002–2010) from Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder (AIRS) and Atmospheric Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) on the Aqua satellite to identify temperature trends in the troposphere and low stratosphere over the Niño 3.4 region of the Tropical Pacific Ocean in the most recent 11-year solar cycle. Employing more extended sea surface temperature (SST) data for five solar cycles (1950–2009) in this region we show that the satellite trends reflect a typical decrease of the sea surface temperature (SST) in the Niño 3.4 region in the declining phase of the solar cycle. The magnitude of the SST decrease depends on the solar cycle and ranges between 0.07 K/yr and 0.27 K/yr for the last five solar cycles.     

The synthesis of helium and CNO isotopes in massive stars

We present helium and CNO isotopic yields for massive mass-losing stars in the initial mass range 15M M _i 50M . We investigate their dependence on assumptions about mass loss rates, internal mixing processes, and metallicity, and specify the contributions from stellar winds and from supernova ejecta.     

Instrument study of the Lunar Dust eXplorer (LDX) for a lunar lander mission

One of the highest-priority issues for a future human or robotic lunar exploration is the lunar dust. This problem should be studied in depth in order to develop an environment model for a future lunar exploration. A future ESA lunar lander mission requires the measurement of dust transport phenomena above the lunar surface. Here, we describe an instrument design concept to measure slow and fast moving charged lunar dust which is based on the principle of charge induction. LDX has a low mass and measures the speed and trajectory of individual dust particles with sizes below one micrometer. Furthermore, LDX has an impact ionization target to monitor the interplanetary dust background. The sensor consists of three planes of segmented grid electrodes and each electrode is connected to an individual charge sensitive amplifier. Numerical signals were computed using the Coulomb software package. The LDX sensitive area is approximately 400 cm². Our simulations reveal trajectory uncertainties of better than 2° with an absolute position accuracy of better than 2 mm.     

Seeking justifications for human spaceflight

Traditionally cited benefits such as scientific and economic progress or political advantages have been widely recognized as insufficient to justify ongoing and future human spaceflight programmes in today's prevailing geopolitical and socioeconomic environment. A rationale for human spaceflight evoking visions such as exploitation of extraterrestrial resources and human exploration of space has to cope with an unavoidable dilemma: attractive as they may appear, those projects are fraught with many grave uncertainties and risks. The paper attempts to answer the question of which significance (if any) such visionary projects may assume in justifying the continuation of human spaceflight activities. We argue that, despite as yet unanswerable technological and economic questions and despite the extremely long time-frames involved, it seems reasonable and, hence, justified to keep the option alive to be able to solve — by means of humans in space — one of humankind's probable major problems in the coming century: the impending energy crisis.     

Miniaturized laser-induced plasma spectrometry for planetary in situ analysis – The case for Jupiter’s moon Europa

Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is one of most promising places in our Solar System where possible extraterrestrial life forms could exist either in the past or even presently. The Europa Lander mission, an exciting part of the international Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM/Laplace), considers in situ planetary exploration of the moon. The distance of Europa from the Earth and the Sun asks for autonomous analytical tools that maximize the scientific return at minimal resources, demanding new experimental concepts. We propose a novel instrument, based on the atomic spectroscopy of laser generated plasmas for the elemental analysis of Europa’s surface materials as far as it is in reach of the lander for example by a robotic arm or a mole, or just onboard the lander. The technique of laser-induced plasma spectrometry provides quantitative elemental analysis of all major and many trace elements. It is a fast technique, i.e. an analysis can be performed in a few seconds, which can be applied to many different types of material such as ice, dust or rocks and it does not require any sample preparation. The sensitivity is in the range of tens of ppm and high lateral resolution, down to 50 μm, is feasible. In addition, it provides the potential of depth profiling, up to 2 mm in rock material and up to a few cm in more transparent icy matrices. Key components of the instrument are presently developed in Germany for planetary in situ missions. This development program is accompanied by an in-depth methodical investigation of this technique under planetary environmental conditions.     

Cool Dense Gas in Early-Type Galaxies

CO observations have shown that many lenticular and elliptical galaxies contain significant amounts of cool dense gas. This review summarizes the observational results related to the neutral gas phase and presents a systematic comparison with other interstellar and stellar data. The discovery of very dense molecular gas in the nuclear regions of early-type galaxies, the possible existence of a dust component neither seen optically nor in CO, internal inconsistencies of cooling flow scenarios, the origin of the cool gas, the presence of massive stars, aspects of galaxy evolution, and possibilities for future research are discussed in the light of the new data.     

Cosima – High Resolution Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer for the Analysis of Cometary Dust Particles onboard Rosetta

The ESA mission Rosetta, launched on March 2nd, 2004, carries an instrument suite to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Anaylzer – COSIMA – is one of three cometary dust analyzing instruments onboard Rosetta. COSIMA is based on the analytic measurement method of secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). The experiment’s goal is in-situ analysis of the elemental composition (and isotopic composition of key elements) of cometary grains. The chemical characterization will include the main organic components, present homologous and functional groups, as well as the mineralogical and petrographical classification of the inorganic phases. All this analysis is closely related to the chemistry and history of the early solar system. COSIMA covers a mass range from 1 to 3500 amu with a mass resolution m/Δm @ 50% of 2000 at mass 100 amu. Cometary dust is collected on special, metal covered, targets, which are handled by a target manipulation unit. Once exposed to the cometary dust environment, the collected dust grains are located on the target by a microscopic camera. A pulsed primary indium ion beam (among other entities) releases secondary ions from the dust grains. These ions, either positive or negative, are selected and accelerated by electrical fields and travel a well-defined distance through a drift tube and an ion reflector. A microsphere plate with dedicated amplifier is used to detect the ions. The arrival times of the ions are digitized, and the mass spectra of the secondary ions are calculated from these time-of-flight spectra. Through the instrument commissioning, COSIMA took the very first SIMS spectra of the targets in space. COSIMA will be the first instrument applying the SIMS technique in-situ to cometary grain analysis as Rosetta approaches the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, after a long journey of 10 years, in 2014.     

Geometry-free linear combinations for Galileo

Global navigation satellites of the European Galileo system transmit code signals on four carriers in the L1, E5a, E5b and E6 band.New geometry-free linear combinations are presented that eliminate the geometry terms (user to satellite ranges and orbital errors), the clock errors of the user and satellites and the tropospheric delay. The remaining parameters of these carrier phase combinations include integer ambiguities, ionospheric delays, carrier phase multipath and phase noise. The weighting coefficients are designed such that the integer nature of ambiguities is maintained. The use of four frequency combinations is highly recommended due to a noise reduction of up to 14.4 dB and an ionospheric reduction of up to 25.6 dB compared to two frequency geometry-free combinations.Moreover, a modified Least-squares Ambiguity Decorrelation Adjustment (LAMBDA) algorithm is suggested, which differs in two points from the traditional approach: the baseline is replaced by the ionospheric delay and the correlation is caused by linear combinations instead of double differences. For correct ambiguity resolution, the ionospheric delay can be determined with millimeter accuracy. This is quite beneficial as the ionosphere represents the largest source of error for absolute positioning.