TUGSAT-1/BRITE-Austria—The first Austrian nanosatellite

A nanosatellite to investigate the brightness oscillations of massive luminous stars by differential photometry is currently developed by a Canadian/Austrian team within the BRITE (Bright Target Explorer) project. The first Austrian satellite funded by the Austrian Space Program, called TUGSAT-1/BRITE-Austria, builds on the space heritage of the most successful Canadian CanX-2 and MOST missions. The satellite makes use of recent advances in miniaturized attitude determination and control systems. Precision three-axis stabilization by small reaction wheels and a star tracker provides the necessary accuracy for the photometer telescope to the arcminute level. This will provide to the astronomers photometric data of the most massive stars with unprecedented precision; data which cannot be obtained from the ground due to limitations imposed by the terrestrial atmosphere.The paper describes the spacecraft characteristics and the ground infrastructure being established in support of the BRITE mission which will consist of a constellation of up to four nearly identical satellites allowing to carry out long-term observation of stars (magnitude +3.5) not only with respect to brightness variations, but also in different spectrum ranges.     

Venus Express—Science observations experience at Venus

The Venus Express mission is the European Space Agency's (ESA) first spacecraft at Venus. It was launched in November 2005 by a Soyuz–Fregat launcher and arrived at Venus in April 2006. The mission covers a broad range of scientific goals including physics, chemistry, dynamics and structure of the atmosphere as well as atmospheric interaction with the surface and several aspects of the surface itself. Furthermore, it investigates the plasma environment and interaction of the solar wind with the atmosphere and escape processes.One month after the arrival at Venus the Venus Express spacecraft started routine science operations. Since then Venus Express has been observing Venus every day for more than one year continuously making new discoveries.In order to ensure that all the science objectives are fulfilled the Venus Express Science Operations Centre (VSOC) has the task of coordinating and implementing the science operations for the mission. During the first year of Venus observations the VSOC and the experiment teams gained a lot of experience in how to make best use of the observation conditions and payload capabilities. While operating the spacecraft in orbit we also acquired more knowledge on the technical constraints and more insight in the science observations and their results.As the nominal mission is coming to an end, the extended mission will start from October 2007. The Extended Science Mission Plan was developed taking into account the lessons learned. At the same time new observations were added along with specific fine-tuned observations in order to complete the science objectives of the mission.This paper will describe how the previous observations influence the current requirements for the observations around Venus today and how they influence the observations in the mission extension. Also it will give an overview of the Extended Science Mission Plan and its challenges for the future observations.     

Numerical simulation of circulation of the Titan’s atmosphere: Interpretation of measurements of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Huygens</Emphasis> probe

The results of numerical simulation of the general circulation in the Titan’s atmosphere at heights from 0 to 250 km are presented, obtained using a new model based on numerical solution of complete equations of motion of viscous compressible gas at the temperature distribution given by an empirical model. The model uses no hydrostatic equation and, as compared with traditional models, has higher resolution in vertical and over horizon. The results presented differ from results of other models and agree with the vertical profile of the zonal component of wind velocity measured by the Huygens spacecraft. Interpretation of this profile is given, including its main peculiarity consisting in a nonmonotonic behavior at heights from 60 to 75 km.     

Autonomous navigation of formation flying spacecrafts in deep space exploration and communication by hybrid navigation utilizing neural network filter

Autonomous navigation of spacecrafts is a difficult task, however, which is a must in future deep space exploration. With multiple spacecrafts flying in space, this aim can be achieved by formation flying spacecraft (FFS) utilizing inverse time difference of arrival (ITDOA) and inverse difference Doppler (IDD) methods, which can locate the position of earth-station from one-way uplink signals in the FFS coordinate, and by way of conversion of coordinates, the position of FFS is achieved in earth-centered earth-fixed (ECEF) coordinate. The ability of neural network (NN) filter in navigation to extract position of spacecrafts from random measuring noise of signal arrival time and Doppler shift is studied with different radius of FFS and surveying parameters. The NN filter used by spacecraft group is new way of unidirectional autonomous navigation and is of high precision of hybrid navigation.     

A laboratory study on the thermally induced transformation of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) to the cyanogen anion (CN) in Solar System analog ices

Mixtures of molecular nitrogen and methane have been identified in numerous outer Solar Systemices including the icy surfaces of Pluto and Triton. We have simulated the interaction of ionizing radiation in the Solar System by carrying out a radiolysis experiment on a methane – molecular nitrogen ice mixture with energetic electrons. We have identified the hydrogen cyanide molecule as the most prominent carbon–nitrogen-bearing reaction product formed. Upon warming the irradiated sample, we followed for the first time the kinetics and temporal evolution of the underlying acid–base chemistry which resulted in the formation of the cyanide ion from hydrogen cyanide. On the surfaces of Triton and Pluto and on comets in Oort’s cloud this sort of complex chemistry is likely to occur. In particular, hydrogen cyanide can be produced in low temperature environments (Oort cloud comets) and may be converted into cyanide ions once the comets reach the warmer regions of the Solar System.     

Using high-energy proton fluence to improve risk prediction for consequences of solar particle events

The potential for exposure to large solar particle events (SPEs) with high energy levels is a major concern during interplanetary transfer and extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) on the lunar and Mars surface. Previously, we have used data from the last 5 solar cycles to estimate percentiles of dose to a typical blood-forming organ (BFO) for a hypothetical astronaut in a nominally shielded spacecraft during a 120-d lunar mission. As part of this process, we made use of complete energy spectra for 34 large historical SPEs to calculate what the BFO mGy-Eq dose would have been in the above lunar scenario for each SPE. From these calculated doses, we then developed a prediction model for BFO dose based solely on an assumed value of integrated fluence above 30 MeV (Φ₃₀) for an otherwise unspecified future SPE. In this study, we reasoned that since BFO dose is determined more by protons with higher energies than by those with lower energies, more accurate BFO dose prediction models could be developed using integrated fluence above 60 (Φ₆₀) and above 100 MeV (Φ₁₀₀) as predictors instead of Φ₃₀. However to calculate the unconditional probability of a BFO dose exceeding a pre-specified limit (“BFO dose risk”), one must also take into account the distribution of the predictor (Φ_30,Φ₆₀, or Φ₁₀₀), as estimated from historical SPEs. But Φ₆₀ and Φ₁₀₀ have more variability, and less available historical information on which to estimate their distributions over many SPE occurrences, than does Φ₃₀. Therefore, when estimating BFO dose risk there is a tradeoff between increased BFO dose prediction at a given energy threshold and decreased accuracy of models for describing the distribution of that threshold over future SPEs as the threshold increases. Even when taking the second of these two factors into account, we still arrived at the conclusion that overall prediction improves as the energy level threshold increases from 30 to 60 to 100 MeV. These results can be applied to the development of approaches to improve radiation protection of astronauts and the optimization of mission planning for future space missions.     

Identification of sources of Pc1 geomagnetic pulsations on the basis of proton aurora observations

The relationship between proton aurora and geomagnetic pulsations Pc1, which are an indicator of development of ion-cyclotron instability in the equatorial magnetosphere, are studied on the basis of the observations of proton aurora from the IMAGE satellite, observations of particle fluxes onboard the low-orbiting NOAA satellites, and geomagnetic pulsation observations at the Lovozero observatory. A conclusion is drawn that the subauroral spots in the proton emission projected into the magnetosphere near the plasmapause are two-dimensional images at the ionospheric “screen” of the region of intense scattering of energetic protons into the loss cone at the development of an ion-cyclotron instability.     

HIRDES – The High-Resolution Double-Echelle Spectrograph for the World Space Observatory Ultraviolet (WSO/UV)

The World Space Observatory Ultraviolet (WSO/UV) is a multi-national project grown out of the needs of the astronomical community to have future access to the UV range. WSO/UV consists of a single UV telescope with a primary mirror of 1.7 m diameter feeding the UV spectrometer and UV imagers. The spectrometer comprises three different spectrographs, two high-resolution echelle spectrographs (the High-Resolution Double-Echelle Spectrograph, HIRDES) and a low-dispersion long-slit instrument. Within HIRDES the 102–310 nm spectral band is split to feed two echelle spectrographs covering the UV range 174–310 nm and the vacuum-UV range 102–176 nm with high spectral resolution (R > 50,000). The technical concept is based on the heritage of two previous ORFEUS SPAS missions. The phase-B1 development activities are described in this paper considering performance aspects, design drivers, related trade-offs (mechanical concepts, material selection etc.) and a critical functional and environmental test verification approach. The current state of other WSO/UV scientific instruments (imagers) is also described.     

Mesospheric doppler wind measurements from Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS)

This paper describes a microwave limb technique for measuring Doppler wind in the Earth’s mesosphere. The research algorithm has been applied to Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) 118.75 GHz measurements where the O₂ Zeeman lines are resolved by a digital autocorrelation spectrometer. A precision of ∼17 m/s for the line-of-sight (LOS) wind is achieved at 80–92 km, which corresponds to radiometric noise during 1/6 s integration time. The LOS winds from Aura MLS are mostly in the meridional direction at low- and mid-latitudes with vertical resolution of ∼8 km. This microwave Doppler technique has potential to obtain useful winds down to ∼40 km of the Earth’s atmosphere if measurements from other MLS frequencies (near H₂O, O₃, and CO lines) are used. Initial analyses show that the MLS winds from the 118.75 GHz measurements agree well with the TIDI (Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics Doppler Interferometer) winds for the perturbations induced by a strong quasi 2-day wave (QTDW) in January 2005. Time series of MLS winds reveal many interesting climatological and planetary wave features, including the diurnal, semidiurnal tides, and the QTDW. Interactions between the tides and the QTDW are clearly evident, indicating possible large tidal structural changes after the QTDW events dissipate.