A balloon-borne very long baseline interferometry experiment in the stratosphere: Systems design and developments

The balloon-borne very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) experiment is a technical feasibility study for performing radio interferometry in the stratosphere. The flight model has been developed. A balloon-borne VLBI station will be launched to establish interferometric fringes with ground-based VLBI stations distributed over the Japanese islands at an observing frequency of approximately 20?GHz as the first step. This paper describes the system design and development of a series of observing instruments and bus systems. In addition to the advantages of avoiding the atmospheric effects of absorption and fluctuation in high frequency radio observation, the mobility of a station can improve the sampling coverage (“uv-coverage”) by increasing the number of baselines by the number of ground-based counterparts for each observation day. This benefit cannot be obtained with conventional arrays that solely comprise ground-based stations. The balloon-borne VLBI can contribute to a future progress of research fields such as black holes by direct imaging.     

Some useful coordinate systems to discuss the apogee motor firing optimization

This paper introduces five useful coordinate systems to optimize the apogee motor firing of a geostationary satellite. This optimization minimizes the propellant consumption for station acquisition manoeuvres. The coordinate systems used for this purpose must depict the optimization parameters together with the propellant consumption. In order to get the propellant consumption, some relations between parameters are derived and the equipropellant lines (planes) are drawn in the coordinate systems. These coordinate systems are used not only for the optimization of the apogee motor firing but also for the optimization of the station acquisition strategy, the transfer orbit setting and the apogee motor sizing.     

Hayabusa—Its technology and science accomplishment summary and Hayabusa-2

Hayabusa performed five descents last November, among which two touching-down flights were included. Actually Hayabusa made three touching-downs and one long landing on the surface of Itokawa during those two flights. This paper summarizes how series of descents were planned and operated. The contents focus their attention on the correction maneuvers planning as well as what kind of terminals with what kind of software tools were actually built and used. The project team had distilled and accumulated their experiences through the rehearsal flights and accomplished this difficult mission. This paper presents the entire story about it.     

Experimental study of impact-cratering damage on brittle cylindrical column model as a fundamental component of space architecture

The cylindrical column of brittle material processed from soil and rock is a fundamental component of architectures on the surface of solid bodies in the solar system. One of the most hazardous events for the structure is damaging by hypervelocity impacts by meteoroids and debris. In such a background, cylindrical columns made of plaster of Paris and glass-bead-sintered ceramic were impacted by spherical projectiles of nylon, glass, and steel at velocity of about 1–4.5 km/s. Measured crater radii, depth, and excavated mass expressed by a function of the cylinder radius are similar irrespective of the target material, if those parameters are normalized by appropriate parameters of the crater produced on the flat-surface target. The empirical scaling relations of the normalized crater radii and depth are provided. Using them, crater dimensions and excavated mass of crater on cylindrical surface of any radius can be predicted from the existing knowledge of those for flat surface. Recommendation for the minimum diameter of a cylinder so as to resist against a given impact is provided.     

滚珠丝杠在超精密定位中的应用

通过分析滚珠丝杠驱动机构的特点,对目前利用这种驱动方式实现大行程的具有纳米分辨率的定位系统的关键技术进行论述。     

Characterization of Multiband Imager Aboard SELENE

The Multiband Imager (MI) is a high-resolution, multi-spectral imaging instrument for lunar exploration. It consists of two cameras, VIS and NIR, and is carried on the SELenological and ENgineering Explorer (SELENE), launched on Sep. 14, 2007. During the observation from January 2008 to June 2009, MI acquired about 450,000 scenes of multispectral image. The radiometric properties of the cameras were characterized using the pre-flight data derived in laboratory experiments with a calibrated integrating sphere. Twelve light source sets were used to examine the S/N ratio, linearity, and saturation level of the cameras. The dark field signal is quite stable in both cameras, having a noise level of less than 1 DN (VIS) and 2 DN (NIR). The fluctuation in the light field is also low (<2 DN), indicating that the spatial nonuniformity in the camera responses can be removed using a flat field. In order to remove the smear signals due to the frame transfer in the VIS data, we developed an iterate algorithm using all bands in the VIS camera. The S/N ratio, which is critical to the precision of the product, is estimated to exceed 160 for the VIS bands and 400 for the NIR bands under low illumination conditions (5% of lunar surface reflectance). Based on the S/N ratio, the radiometric error due to the noise is calculated to be less than 0.7% for VIS and 0.2% for NIR. The relationship between input and output of the VIS camera is linear with a residual of less than 0.6 DN, corresponding to a radiometric error of 0.3%. The NIR exhibits a non-linear response to the input radiance. A cubic function best fits the pre-flight data with an average residual of 8 DN (corresponds to an error of 0.8%). Validation using in-flight data indicated that the instability of the dark output has not changed, but the level of dark output has slightly changed in the NIR bands (less than 6 DN). The pixel-to-pixel sensitivity variation in the orbit has been changed from that in the pre-flight experiment. The difference between the in-flight data and the pre-flight data ranges within ±2%. There is also a small (less than ±1%) but nonnegligible difference between in-flight data of different cycles in both the VIS and NIR bands, suggesting that the coefficient for spatial ununiformity correction needs to be calculated for each cycle.     

Theory of magnetic pulsations

We present theory of long period (pc 3 to pc 5) magnetic pulsations. It consists of two parts; one (we call type A) deals with a resonant Alfvén wave excitation at a local field line by a monochromatic wave generated at the magnetopause, and the other (we call type B) deals with an excitation of a surface eigenmode by an externally applied impulse at a location with a rapid spatial change of plasma parameter(s).For the type A pulsations, the theory gives the frequency, the sense and the ellipticity of the polarization and the orientation angle of the major axis as a function of the magnetospheric parameters. In particular, it is shown that the orientation angle of the major axis of the polarization ellipse is a sensitive function of the direction of the wave propagation in longitude and the change of the number density and the magnetic flux density in the radial direction, hence it can be used as an important diagnostic parameter.In the type B pulsations, the theory gives the excitation frequency and the damping rate of the pulsations using the derived surface eigenmode. Example of an application to the observed magnetic field oscillations at the plasmapause is presented in which the observed frequency and the damping rate are used to estimate the plasmapause density and its radial density gradient.     

The Japanese Experiment Module

This paper describes Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) which is a Japanese contribution to International Space Station (SS) Program. First half of phase B study of JEM was completed last March successfully. JEM primary function and basic configuration has been established. JEM consists of a Pressurized Module (PM), an Exposed Facility (EF), a scientific/equipment airlock, a local remote manipulator, and an Experimental Logistic Module (ELM). With all those hardware elements, JEM will accommodate general scientific and technology development research (some of which are to utilize the advantage of microgravity environment), and also accommodate control panels for the Space Station Mobile Remote Manipulator System and attached payloads.     

Search for primordial antiparticles with BESS

The Balloon-borne Experiment with a Superconducting Spectrometer (BESS) has been carried out to search for primordial antiparticles in cosmic rays. In ten flights from 1993 to 2004, it measured the cosmic-ray antiproton spectrum in the energy range 0.1–4.2 GeV at various solar activity conditions. It also searched for antideuterons and antihelium nuclei, and it made precise measurement of cosmic-ray particle spectra. The BESS program has been extended to long duration balloon (LDB) flights in Antarctica (BESS-Polar) with the goal of achieving unprecedented sensitivity in the search for primordial antiparticles. This report describes recent results from BESS and progress of the BESS-Polar program.     

Cross-Scale Coupling Within Rolled-Up MHD-Scale Vortices and Its Effect on Large Scale Plasma Mixing Across the Magnetospheric Boundary

Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability (KHI) is an MHD-scale instability that grows in a velocity shear layer such as the low-latitude boundary layer of the magnetosphere. KHI is driven unstable when a velocity shear is strong enough to overcome the stabilization effect of magnetic field. When the shear is significantly strong, vortices in the nonlinear stage of KHI is so rolled-up as to situate magnetospheric plasma outward of the magnetosheath plasma and vice versa. The big question is if such highly rolled-up vortices contribute significantly to the plasma transport across the boundary and to the filling of the plasma sheet by cool magnetosheath component, which is observed under northward Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) condition. Here we review our recent results from two-fluid simulations of MHD-scale KHI with finite electron inertia taken into account. The results indicate that there is coupling between the MHD-scale dynamics and electron-scale dynamics in the rolled-up stage of the vortices. While the details differ depending on the initial magnetic geometry, the general conclusion is that there is significant modification of the MHD-scale vortex flow pattern via coupling to the micro-physics. The kick-back from the parasitic micro-physics enhances highly the potential for large-scale plasma mixing of the parent MHD-scale vortices, which is prohibited by definition in ideal-MHD. We also review our recent 3-D MHD simulation results indicating that KHI vortex can indeed roll-up in the magnetotail-flank situation despite the strong stabilization by the lobe magnetic field. These results encouraged us to search for evidence of rolled-up vortices in the Cluster formation flying observations. As reviewed in this paper, a nice event was found during northward IMF interval. This interval is when the plasma transport via large scale reconnection becomes less efficient. The finding supports the argument that KHI is playing some role in transporting solar wind into the magnetosphere when the normal mode of transport cannot dominate.