The Ultraviolet Spectrograph on NASA’s Juno Mission

The ultraviolet spectrograph instrument on the Juno mission (Juno-UVS) is a long-slit imaging spectrograph designed to observe and characterize Jupiter’s far-ultraviolet (FUV) auroral emissions. These observations will be coordinated and correlated with those from Juno’s other remote sensing instruments and used to place in situ measurements made by Juno’s particles and fields instruments into a global context, relating the local data with events occurring in more distant regions of Jupiter’s magnetosphere. Juno-UVS is based on a series of imaging FUV spectrographs currently in flight—the two Alice instruments on the Rosetta and New Horizons missions, and the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. However, Juno-UVS has several important modifications, including (1) a scan mirror (for targeting specific auroral features), (2) extensive shielding (for mitigation of electronics and data quality degradation by energetic particles), and (3) a cross delay line microchannel plate detector (for both faster photon counting and improved spatial resolution). This paper describes the science objectives, design, and initial performance of the Juno-UVS.     

The future of Earth observations in the USA

Earth observations is a controversial subject because of the diversity of interests involved, but one that should not be ignored, as is currently the case, by the US government. This article describes the changing character of Earth observations and the opportunities it provides for economic benefit and national and international economies of scale. Such opportunities can best be met by the formation of an international Earth observations body, in which the USA, represented by an expanded EOSAT, should play a leading role.     

Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) Investigation

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) investigation will use a 2-megapixel color camera with a focusable macro lens aboard the rover, Curiosity, to investigate the stratigraphy and grain-scale texture, structure, mineralogy, and morphology of geologic materials in northwestern Gale crater. Of particular interest is the stratigraphic record of a ～5?km thick layered rock sequence exposed on the slopes of Aeolis Mons (also known as Mount Sharp). The instrument consists of three parts, a?camera head mounted on the turret at the end of a robotic arm, an electronics and data storage assembly located inside the rover body, and a calibration target mounted on the robotic arm shoulder azimuth actuator housing. MAHLI can acquire in-focus images at working distances from ～2.1?cm to infinity. At the minimum working distance, image pixel scale is ～14?μm per pixel and very coarse silt grains can be resolved. At the working distance of the Mars Exploration Rover Microscopic Imager cameras aboard Spirit and Opportunity, MAHLI’s resolution is comparable at ～30?μm per pixel. Onboard capabilities include autofocus, auto-exposure, sub-framing, video imaging, Bayer pattern color interpolation, lossy and lossless compression, focus merging of up to 8 focus stack images, white light and longwave ultraviolet (365 nm) illumination of nearby subjects, and 8 gigabytes of non-volatile memory data storage.     

Supersymmetric Relics

After recalling the motivations for expecting supersymmetry to appear at energies 1 TeV, the reasons why the lightest supersymmetric particle is an ideal candidate for cold dark matter are reviewed. Recent calculations of the relic density including coannihilations and rapid annihilations through direct-channel Higgs boson poles are presented. The experimental constraints from LEP and elsewhere on supersymmetric dark matter are reviewed. The potential implications of a Higgs boson weighing about 115 GeV and the recent measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon are summarized.     

Theoretical Aspects of Dark Matter Detection

Direct and indirect dark matter detection relies on the scattering of the dark matter candidate on nucleons or nuclei. Here, attention is focused on dark matter candidates (neutralinos) predicted in the minimal supersymmetric standard model and its constrained version with universal input soft supersymmetry-breaking masses. Current expectations for elastic scattering cross sections for neutralinos on protons are discussed with particular attention to satisfying all current accelerator constraints as well as insuring a sufficient cosmological relic density to account for the dark matter in the universe.     

Change and continuity in US space policy

2010 saw both the unveiling of a new US National Space Policy and the announcement of a fundamentally different strategy for US human spaceflight that would move from the NASA-government-led Apollo-style approach to a greater reliance on the private sector and international cooperation. This viewpoint puts forward arguments on why change in the US approach to human spaceflight is needed, while acknowledging that achieving it in the face of vested interests and threats to jobs and livelihoods is extremely difficult. It suggests that greater US recognition of the need to ensure the sustainability of space activity (by addressing debris, radio-frequency interference and potential deliberate disruption of spacecraft), and an apparent willingness to countenance international norms to govern space activities, could be the new policy’s most lasting heritage.     

First stage identification of syntactic elements in an extra-terrestrial signal

By investigating the generic attributes of a representative set of terrestrial languages at varying levels of abstraction, it is our endeavour to try and isolate elements of the signal universe, which are computationally tractable for its detection and structural decipherment. Ultimately, our aim is to contribute in some way to the understanding of what ‘languageness’ actually is. This paper describes algorithms and software developed to characterise and detect generic intelligent language-like features in an input signal, using natural language learning techniques: looking for characteristic statistical “language-signatures” in test corpora. As a first step towards such species-independent language-detection, we present a suite of programs to analyse digital representations of a range of data, and use the results to extrapolate whether or not there are language-like structures which distinguish this data from other sources, such as music, images, and white noise.     

A new US approach to human spaceflight?

In 2010 the administration of President Barack Obama proposed a dramatically new approach to future US human spaceflight. That new strategy was immediately controversial. This article traces the origins of the new spaceflight strategy and the continuing political debate with respect to its acceptance.     

Sounding rocket experiment of bare electrodynamic tether system

An overview of a sounding rocket, S-520-25th, project on space tether technology experiment is presented. The project is prepared by an international research group consisting of Japanese, European, American, and Australian researchers. The sounding rocket will be assembled by the ISAS/JAXA and will be launched in the summer of 2009. The sounding rocket mission includes two engineering experiments and two scientific experiments. These experiments consist of the deployment of bare electrodynamic tape tether in space, a quick ignition test of hollow cathode system in space, the demonstration of bare electrodynamic tether system in space, and the test of the OML (orbital-motion-limit) current collection theory.