The biological clock of Neurospora in a microgravity environment.

The circadian rhythm of conidiation in Neurospora crassa is thought to be an endogenously derived circadian oscillation; however, several investigators have suggested that circadian rhythms may, instead, be driven by some geophysical time cue(s). An experiment was conducted on space shuttle flight STS-9 in order to test this hypothesis; during the first 7-8 cycles in space, there were several minor alterations observed in the conidiation rhythm, including an increase in the period of the oscillation, an increase in the variability of the growth rate and a diminished rhythm amplitude, which eventually damped out in 25% of the flight tubes. On day seven of flight, the tubes were exposed to light while their growth fronts were marked. Some aspect of the marking process reinstated a robust rhythm in all the tubes which continued throughout the remainder of the flight. These results from the last 86 hours of flight demonstrated that the rhythm can persist in space. Since the aberrant rhythmicity occurred prior to the marking procedure, but not after, it was hypothesized that the damping on STS-9 may have resulted from the hypergravity pulse of launch. To test this hypothesis, we conducted investigations into the effects of altered gravitational forces on conidiation. Exposure to hypergravity (via centrifugation), simulated microgravity (via the use of a clinostat) and altered orientations (via alterations in the vector of a 1 g force) were used to examine the effects of gravity upon the circadian rhythm of conidiation.     

Innovations for competitiveness: European views on “better-faster-cheaper”

The paper elaborates on “ lessons learned” from two recent ESA workshops, one focussing on the role of Innovation in the competitiveness of the space sector and the second on technology and engineering aspects conducive to better, faster and cheaper space programmes. The paper focuses primarily on four major aspects, namely:

1. a) the adaptations of industrial and public organisations to the global market needs;

2. b) the understanding of the bottleneck factors limiting competitiveness;

3. c) the trends toward new system architectures and new engineering and production methods;

4. d) the understanding of the role of new technology in the future applications.

Under the pressure of market forces and the influence of many global and regional players, applications of space systems and technology are becoming more and more competitive. It is well recognised that without major effort for innovation in industrial practices, organisations, R&D, marketing and financial approaches the European space sector will stagnate and loose its competence as well as its competitiveness. It is also recognised that a programme run according to the “better, faster, cheaper” philosophy relies on much closer integration of system design, development and verification, and draws heavily on a robust and comprehensive programme of technology development, which must run in parallel and off-line with respect to flight programmes.

A company's innovation capabilities will determine its future competitive advantage (in time, cost, performance or value) and overall growth potential. Innovation must be a process that can be counted on to provide repetitive, sustainable, long-term performance improvements. As such, it needs not depend on great breakthroughs in technology and concepts (which are accidental and rare). Rather, it could be based on bold evolution through the establishment of know-how, application of best practices, process effectiveness and high standards, performance measurement, and attention to customers and professional marketing. Having a technological lead allows industry to gain a competitive advantage in performance, cost and opportunities. Instrumental to better competitiveness is an R&D effort based on the adaptation of high technology products, capable of capturing new users, increasing production, decreasing the cost and delivery time and integrating high level of intelligence, information and autonomy. New systems will have to take in to account from the start what types of technologies are being developed or are already available in other areas outside space, and design their system accordingly. The future challenge for “faster, better, cheaper” appears to concern primarily “cost-effective”, performant autonomous spacecraft, “cost-effective”, reliable launching means and intelligent data fusion technologies and robust software serving mass- market real time services, distributed via EHF bands and Internet.

In conclusion, it can be noticed that in the past few years new approaches have considerably enlarged the ways in which space missions can be implemented. They are supported by true innovations in mission concepts, system architecture, development and technologies, in particular for the development of initiatives based on multi-mission mini-satellites platforms for communication and Earth observation missions. There are also definite limits to cost cutting (such as lowering heads counts and increasing efficiency), and therefore the strategic perspective must be shifted from the present emphasis on cost-driven enhancement to revenue-driven improvements for growth. And since the product life-cycle is continuously shortening, competitiveness is linked very strongly with the capability to generate new technology products which enhance cost/benefit performance.     

Current status and future plans for the general antiparticle spectrometer (GAPS)

We discuss current progress and future plans for the general antiparticle spectrometer experiment (GAPS). GAPS detects antideuterons through the X-rays and pions emitted during the deexcitation of exotic atoms formed when the antideuterons are slowed down and stopped in targets. GAPS provides an exceptionally sensitive means to detect cosmic-ray antideuterons. Cosmic-ray antideuterons can provide indirect evidence for the existence of dark matter in such form as neutralinos or Kaluza–Klein particles. We describe results of accelerator testing of GAPS prototypes, tentative design concepts for a flight GAPS detector, and near-term plans for flying a GAPS prototype on a balloon.     

Studies of vegetation and soils from aerospace measurements

The problem of soil and vegetation recognition with the use of satellite-derived digitized images and sub-satellite spectral brightness measurements at test sites data is discussed. A technique for retrieval of soil humus content is suggested.     

Temperature comparison between CHAMP radio occultation and TIMED/SABER measurements in the lower stratosphere

Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver on the CHAllenging Mini-satellite Payload (CHAMP) and the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument, one of four on board the TIMED satellite, provide middle atmosphere temperature profiles by Radio Occultation (RO) and limb viewing infrared emission measurements, respectively. These temperature profiles retrieved by two different techniques in the stratosphere are compared with each other using more than 1300 correlative profiles in March, September and December 2005. The over-all mean differences averaged over 15 and 35 km are approximately −2 K and standard deviation is less than 3 K. Below 20 km of altitude, relatively small mean temperature differences ∼1 K are observed in wide latitudinal range except for June (during the SABER nighttime observation). In the middle to low latitudes, between 30°S and 30°N, the temperature difference increases with height from ∼0–1 K at 15 km, to ∼−4 K at 35 km of altitude. Large temperature differences about −4 to −6 K are observed between 60°S and 30°N and 31–35 km of altitude for all months and between 0° and 30°N below 16 km during June (nighttime).     

Implication of multiple dipolarization event near 9 RE for the physics of substorms

In 2001, 2002 and 2003, the Polar spacecraft probed the near equatorial plasma sheet at 9 R_E near local midnight. Using the magnetic field observations, the signatures at substorm onsets are studied. Close to the flux pile-up region, the Polar spacecraft readily detects the dipolarization front, especially for pseudo onsets. An event with two distinct onsets has been examined. The signatures are found to be consistent with the multiple-onset model suggested by Russell [Russell, C.T. How northward turnings of the IMF can lead to substorm expansion onsets. Geophys. Res. Lett. 27, 3257–3259, 2000] which is a modified Near-Earth Neutral Line (NENL) model. Another similar event is also examined showing the effects of different Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) conditions upon substorms. Moreover, ground effects can be very weak compared to in situ observations, especially for pseudo onsets, because these signatures appear to be localized and not global.     

Variations of the solar acoustic high-degree mode frequencies over solar cycle 23

Using full-disk observations obtained with the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, we present variations of the solar acoustic mode frequencies caused by the solar activity cycle. High-degree (100 < ? < 900) solar acoustic modes were analyzed using global helioseismology analysis techniques over most of solar cycle 23. We followed the methodology described in details in [Korzennik, S.G., Rabello-Soares, M.C., Schou, J. On the determination of Michelson Doppler Imager high-degree mode frequencies. ApJ 602, 481–515, 2004] to infer unbiased estimates of high-degree mode parameters ([see also Rabello-Soares, M.C., Korzennik, S.G., Schou, J. High-degree mode frequencies: changes with solar cycle. ESA SP-624, 2006]). We have removed most of the known instrumental and observational effects that affect specifically high-degree modes. We show that the high-degree changes are in good agreement with the medium-degree results, except for years when the instrument was highly defocused. We analyzed and discuss the effect of defocusing on high-degree estimation. Our results for high-degree modes confirm that the frequency shift scaled by the relative mode inertia is a function of frequency and it is independent of degree.     

Effect of Observation Errors on Satellite Attitude Estimation

A study of the effect of observation errors on the best least squares estimate of satellite attitude based on two sets of direction measurements, where one set contains two independent measurements which are corrupted by zero-mean normally distributed additive errors, is summarized. Using Monte-Carlo techniques, the statistics of the estimated rotation of the satellite, from a known reference, were obtained. It was found that one of the parameterizations of the rotation, namely, the vector z, is best suited for estimation, since ?z is normally distributed with zero mean and its standard deviation is independent of the two direction measurements.     

ARTEMIS Mission Design

The ARTEMIS mission takes two of the five THEMIS spacecraft beyond their prime mission objectives and reuses them to study the Moon and the lunar space environment. Although the spacecraft and fuel resources were tailored to space observations from Earth orbit, sufficient fuel margins, spacecraft capability, and operational flexibility were present that with a circuitous, ballistic, constrained-thrust trajectory, new scientific information could be gleaned from the instruments near the Moon and in lunar orbit. We discuss the challenges of ARTEMIS trajectory design and describe its current implementation to address both heliophysics and planetary science objectives. In particular, we explain the challenges imposed by the constraints of the orbiting hardware and describe the trajectory solutions found in prolonged ballistic flight paths that include multiple lunar approaches, lunar flybys, low-energy trajectory segments, lunar Lissajous orbits, and low-lunar-periapse orbits. We conclude with a discussion of the risks that we took to enable the development and implementation of ARTEMIS.