One year old and growing: a status report of the International Space Station and its partners.

The International Space Station (ISS), as the largest international science and engineering program in history, features unprecedented technical, cost, scheduling, managerial, and international complexity. A number of major milestones have been accomplished to date, including the construction of major elements of flight hardware, the development of operations and sustaining engineering centers, astronaut training, and eight Space Shuttle/Mir docking missions. International partner contributions and levels of participation have been baselined, and negotiations and discussions are nearing completion regarding bartering arrangements for services and new hardware. As ISS is successfully executed, it can pave the way for more inspiring cooperative achievements in the future.     

The chromosphere-corona transition zone above an active region

Intensities and profiles of ion emission lines between 1170 A and 1700 A from an active region on the Sun are measured from spectra obtained with the Naval Research Laboratory's High Resolution Telescope and Spectrograph - HRTS. The measurements provide simultaneous determination of line intensities, wavelength shifts and Doppler widths at 50 separate positions in the active region, with spatial resolution of 1 arc second and spectral resolution 0.07 A. Fine structure variation of intensities and gas flow velocities in the temperature range 20,000–200,000 K are determined. The density sensitive line pair I(1486 N IV)/I(1548 C IV) has been used to measure electron pressures. Derived emission measures imply filling factors of 0.05–0.1 to balance the divergence of conductive flux width radiative losses above 60,000 K.     

英国防部发起新型航空母舰的竞争

日前，英国国防部向全球航空航天制造商发起了价值244亿美元、为英国海军制造两艘航空母舰的竞标活动。有6家公司参与了竞标，它们是波音、英国宇航防御系统、洛克希德、马丁、马可尼电子系统、雷神和汤姆逊一CSF公司。这6家公司都具有较强的海军系统综合能力。但英国政府坚持，新型航空母舰必须在英国制造。计划的第一阶段是在今年秋季选出3家承包商进行初步研究，台问价值830万美元。然后再从中选出两家公司进行减少风险的研究，台同价值3300万美元。最终承包商的确定预计将在2001年，第一艘航空母舰计划于2012年投入使用。该项目由国防…     

Flight performance of a high resolution,high data rate solar ultraviolet telescope and spectrograph

The High Resolution Telescope and Spectrograph (HRTS) instrument has been flown three times on sounding rockets and has dramatically demonstrated the value of high resolution (spectral, spatial, and temporal) coupled with wide spectral and spatial coverage. Through the use of film as a detector, the HRTS can capture a large spectral and spatial range simultaneously. Because of the high spectral and spatial resolution, each exposure contains 10 million data points. After digitizing, this equates to a data collection rate of four megabits per second for a 20 second exposure. Because of the large film format, a set of HRTS exposures has recorded complete profiles of over 2800 emission lines simultaneously at 1000 different locations on the Sun. These emission lines originate in temperature regimes ranging from the temperature minimum to the corona. This allows a statistical analysis of temperature, pressure, density and velocity in many layers of the solar atmosphere.     

The International Space Station: a pathway to the future

Nearly six years after the launch of the first International Space Station element, and four years after its initial occupation, the United States and our 6 international partners have made great strides in operating this impressive Earth orbiting research facility. This past year we have done so in the face of the adversity of operating without the benefit of the Space Shuttle. In his January 14, 2004, speech announcing a new vision for America's space program, President Bush affirmed the United States' commitment to completing construction of the International Space Station by 2010. The President also stated that we would focus our future research aboard the Station on the long-term effects of space travel on human biology. This research will help enable human crews to venture through the vast voids of space for months at a time. In addition, ISS affords a unique opportunity to serve as an engineering test bed for hardware and operations critical to the exploration tasks. NASA looks forward to working with our partners on International Space Station research that will help open up new pathways for future exploration and discovery beyond low Earth orbit. This paper provides an overview of the International Space Station Program focusing on a review of the events of the past year, as well as plans for next year and the future.     

Integration of multiple research disciplines on the International Space Station.

The International Space Station will provide an extremely high-quality, long-duration microgravity environment for the conduct of research. In addition, the ISS offers a platform for performing observations of Earth and Space from a high-inclination orbit, outside of the Earth's atmosphere. This unique environment and observational capability offers the opportunity for advancement in a diverse set of research fields. Many of these disciplines do not relate to one another, and present widely differing approaches to study, as well as different resource and operational requirements. Significant challenges exist to ensure the highest quality research return for each investigation. Requirements from different investigations must be identified, clarified, integrated and communicated to ISS personnel in a consistent manner. Resources such as power, crew time, etc. must be apportioned to allow the conduct of each investigation. Decisions affecting research must be made at the strategic level as well as at a very detailed execution level. The timing of the decisions can range from years before an investigation to real-time operations. The international nature of the Space Station program adds to the complexity. Each participating country must be assured that their interests are represented during the entire planning and operations process. A process for making decisions regarding research planning, operations, and real-time replanning is discussed. This process ensures adequate representation of all research investigators. It provides a means for timely decisions, and it includes a means to ensure that all ISS International Partners have their programmatic interests represented.     

HRTS observations of spicular emission at transition region temperatures above the solar limb

Slit spectra and spectroheliograph observations were obtained during the fourth rocket flight of the High Resolution Telescope and Spectrograph (HRTS) on 7 March 1983. A curved slit 900 arc sec in length was placed at the solar limb on the western edge of the south polar coronal hole, giving both coronal hole and quiet region coverage. In addition, spectroheliograph images tuned to cover a passband around 1550 Å (primarily C IV at 10⁵ K) were taken over an 8 × 15 arc min field. Simultaneous Hα images were obtained at Sac Peak Observatory. The C IV spectroheliograms show general spiked emission above the limb, and also several small loo- or prominence-like events. Slit spectra along the tops of several of these structures show tilted features which could be interpreted as rotational velocities of approximately 50 km s^?1.