Ring Currents and Internal Plasma Sources

The discovery of terrestrial O⁺ and other heavy ions in magnetospheric hot plasmas, combined with the association of energetic ionospheric outflows with geomagnetic activity, led to the conclusion that increasing geomagnetic activity is responsible for filling the magnetosphere with ionospheric plasma. Recently it has been discovered that a major source of ionospheric heavy ion plasma outflow is responsive to the earliest impact of coronal mass ejecta upon the dayside ionosphere. Thus a large increase in ionospheric outflows begins promptly during the initial phase of geomagnetic storms, and is already present during the main phase development of such storms. We hypothesize that enhancement of the internal source of plasma actually supports the transition from substorm enhancements of aurora to storm-time ring current development in the inner magnetosphere. Other planets known to have ring current-like plasmas also have substantial internal sources of plasma, notably Jupiter and Saturn. One planet having a small magnetosphere, but very little internal source of plasma, is Mercury. Observations suggest that Mercury has substorms, but are ambiguous with regard to the possibility of magnetic storms of the planet. The Messenger mission to Mercury should provide an interesting test of our hypothesis. Mercury should support at most a modest ring current if its internal plasma source is as small as is currently believed. If substantiated, this hypothesis would support a general conclusion that the magnetospheric inflationary response is a characteristic of magnetospheres with substantial internal plasma sources. We quantitatively define this hypothesis and pose it as a problem in comparative magnetospheres.     

SAR ATR performance using a conditionally Gaussian model

A family of conditionally Gaussian signal models for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery is presented, extending a related class of models developed for high resolution radar range profiles. This signal model is robust with respect to the variations of the complex-valued radar signals due to the coherent combination of returns from scatterers as those scatterers move through relative distances on the order of a wavelength of the transmitted signal (target speckle). The target type and the relative orientations of the sensor, target, and ground plane parameterize the conditionally Gaussian model. Based upon this model, algorithms to jointly estimate both the target type and pose are developed. Performance results for both target pose estimation and target recognition are presented for publicly released data from the MSTAR program     

Soho Observations of Density Fluctuations in Coronal Holes

In recent UVCS/SOHO White Light Channel (WLC) observations we found quasi-periodic variations in the polarized brightness (pB) in the polar coronal holes at heliocentric distances of 1.9 to 2.45 solar radii. The motivation for the observation is the 2.5D MHD model of solar wind acceleration by nonlinear waves, that predicts compressive fluctuations in coronal holes. In February 1998 we performed new observations using the UVCS/WLC in the coronal hole and obtained additional data. The new data corroborate our earlier findings with higher statistical significance. The new longer observations show that the power spectrum peaks in the 10–12 minute range. These timescales agree with EIT observations of brightness fluctuations in polar plumes. We performed preliminary LASCO/C2 observations in an effort to further establish the coronal origin of the fluctuations. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Resonant Cavity Measurements of Ionized Wakes

A transmission resonant cavity technique, which is suitable for making measurements of electron line densities and collision frequencies in the ionized wakes of hypervelocity projectiles, is described. With this method electron density measurements can be made over six orders of magnitude. Resonant cavity design requirements and limitations of the method are discussed. Typical data from measurements behind projectiles traveling at speeds up to 6.5 km/s are given.     

Analysis of Performance Degradation in CdS Solar Cells

The effect of changes in five physically meaningful parameters on the I-V (current-voltage) curve of a CdS solar cell is calculated. Comparisons between the calculated data and performance data obtained from degraded solar cells are made. The parameter that changed to cause the degradation in each cell becomes apparent.     

Space Radiation Damage Measurements in the Earth Synchronous Orbit

For direct measurement of the integrated radiation dose experienced in Earth synchronous orbit, p-i-n diodes were flown as radiation dosimeters on LES-6. The diode, which has a lifetime of 10-4 seconds in the intrinsic region, was originally developed as a neutron dosimeter, but can detect 1-MeV electron fluences as low as 1013 e·cm-2. Observations over three years in orbit are presented.     

结构误差对旋转稳定弹丸气动特性影响的数值模拟

基于剪切应力传输(SST)k-ω湍流模型,对考虑结构误差情况下的弹箭模型进行数值模拟计算。首先采用CFD和工程经验公式相结合的方法,得到了不同马赫数、不同转速情况下无结构误差模型的多种气动特性参数。通过与实验数据对比,阻力、法向力、俯仰力矩、压心位置误差在10%以内,验证了该方法的可行性和准确性。然后,建立了考虑结构误差即质量分布不对称、弹体不同轴和无结构误差模型,并分别进行了气动特性模拟计算。结果表明,质量偏心对滚转阻尼力矩系数、马格努斯力矩系数影响很大;弹体不同轴对法向力系数导数、俯仰力矩系数导数、马格努斯力矩系数导数和压心位置都产生很大影响。结构误差使模型的多种气动特性参数产生很大变化,将影响其飞行弹道和稳定性。     

Data Association and Track Management for the Gaussian Mixture Probability Hypothesis Density Filter

The Gaussian mixture probability hypothesis density (GM-PHD) recursion is a closed-form solution to the probability hypothesis density (PHD) recursion, which was proposed for jointly estimating the time-varying number of targets and their states from a sequence of noisy measurement sets in the presence of data association uncertainty, clutter, and miss-detection. However the GM-PHD filter does not provide identities of individual target state estimates, that are needed to construct tracks of individual targets. In this paper, we propose a new multi-target tracker based on the GM-PHD filter, which gives the association amongst state estimates of targets over time and provides track labels. Various issues regarding initiating, propagating and terminating tracks are discussed. Furthermore, we also propose a technique for resolving identities of targets in close proximity, which the PHD filter is unable to do on its own.