SDI and the new space renaissance

This article outlines the objectives of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Program and describes the new technologies being considered by the Program. The author puts forward the view that the SDI will yield great benefits beyond the military goals, in terms of important technological advances, stimulation of the US economy and increased national security.     

Impacts of solar and auroral storms on power line systems

A sensitive search for pulsars inside a sample of gamma-ray source error boxes has been carried out using the Arecibo and Parkes radiotelescopes. The paper describes the motivation of this search and the characteristics of the experiments used. As a preliminary result, new pulsars have been discovered and some of them are possibly candidates to be the counterparts of the gamma-ray sources.     

Microwave Landing System Area Navigation

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPS) states that the Time Reference Scanning Beam (TRSB) Microwave Landing System will supplant the existing Instrument Landing System (ILS) as the recognized international standard as early as 1995. The MLS provides the ability to determine the aircraft's position in three dimensional space over a large coverage volume in the airport terminal area. This affords the capability to navigate and execute approaches throughout this volume of coverage. This technique is known as Microwave Landing System Area Navigation (MLS RNAV). In order to assess and further develop the potential capabilities of MLS RNAV, the FAA Technical Center has undertaken the tasks of performing analytical studies, as well as the development of a prototype MLS RNAV system.     

Optimal FIR filters for time-varying state-space models

An optimal FIR (finite impulse response) filter and smoother is introduced for the time-varying state-space model. The suggested filter has an FIR structure and utilizes finite observation. It is shown that the impulse response of the optimal FIR filter can be obtained by a simple Riccati-type matrix differential equation. Especially for time-invariant systems, this FIR filter reduces to previously known simple forms. For implementation, a recursive form of the optimal FIR filter and smoother is derived by using adjoint variables, and computational algorithms are suggested. It is also shown by sensitivity analysis that the proposed optimal FIR filter alleviates potential divergence characteristics of the standard Kalman filter     

The effects of extended clinorotation on potato minituber formation and structure.

Formation and structure of potato minitubers grown aseptically for 30 days on a horizontal clinostat and in stationary control have been studied by light and electron microscopy. It was demonstrated that the number of plants that formed minitubers, their size and fresh weight, was higher when clino-rotated than in the stationary control. It was revealed that the amount of amyloplasts in parenchyma cell sections was doubled in minitubers formed under clino-rotation. Other factors (shape of minitubers and size of reserve parenchyma cells) did not differ from the stationary control. The changes in amyloplast ultrastructure suggest accelerated cell maturity of potato reserve parenchyma in extended clino-rotation.     

Distortions of rectangular pulse with linear frequency modulation during trans-ionospheric sounding of the Martian surface

Specific features of propagation of a wideband rectangular pulse along the route spacecraft-Martian surface-spacecraft caused by the influence of the planetary ionosphere are considered as applied to the problem of radio pulse sounding of the subsurface Martian soil from the Mars-Express satellite. The night Martian ionosphere considerably reduces the energy of the pulse, but does not lead to degradation of its envelope or uncertainty function. When sounding a two-layer surface, the influence of the ionosphere is also manifested in limitation from below of the thickness of the upper layer accessible for measurement, which is more essential than when sounding with the use of a wideband Gaussian pulse. It is demonstrated that the surface sounding is possible through the dayside planet ionosphere at the parameters of operating pulse of the MARSIS radar.     

Large light X-ray optics: basic ideas and concepts

One of the main guidelines for future X-ray astronomy projects like, e.g., XEUS (ESA) and Generation-X (NASA) is to utilize grazing-incidence focusing optics with extremely large telescopes (several tens of m² at 1 keV), with a dramatic increase in collecting area of about two order of magnitude compared to the current X-ray telescopes. In order to avoid the problem of the source's confusion limit at low fluxes, the angular resolution required for these optics should be superb (a few arcsec at most). The enormous mirror dimensions together with the high imaging performances give rise to a number of manufacturing problems. It is basically impossible to realize so large mirrors from closed Wolter I shells which benefit from high mechanical stiffness. Instead the mirrors need to be formed as rectangular segments and a series of them will be assembled in a petal. Taking into account the realistic load capabilities of space launchers, to be able to put in orbit so large mirror modules the mass/geometric-area ratio of the optics should be very small. Finally, with a so large optics mass it would be very difficult to provide the electric power for an optics thermal active control, able to maintain the mirrors at the usual temperature of 20 °C. Therefore, very likely, the optics will instead operate in extreme thermal conditions, with the mirror temperature oscillating between −30 and −40 °C, that tends to exclude the epoxy replication approach (the mismatch between the CTE of the substrate and that of the resin would cause prohibitively large deformations of the mirror surface profiles). From these considerations light weight materials with high thermal–mechanical properties such as glass or ceramics become attractive to realize the mirrors of future Xray telescopes. In this paper, we will discuss a segments manufacturing method based on Borofloat^TM glass. A series of finite element analysis concerning different aspects of the production, testing and integration of the optics are also presented as well.     

A Direct Solution to GPS-Type Navigation Equations

One solution to the navigation equations involves iteration on the 4 by 4 augmented range-direction-cosine matrix beginning with an assumed position and so assumed direction cosines, of which there are 12 for 4 satellites. An algebraic, direct solution to this same basic equation set has recently been published. Both of these methods are reviewed. We offer a direct solution using modified functions of the range magnitude data from four satellites to yield user's clock bias correction, user's position, and true range vectors if desired. The highest order of matrix inversion used is 2 by 2. The highest order, nonlinear equation is a numeric square root. The principle of the formulation is use of differences among the range magnitudes and range magnitudes squared. An additional auxiliary difference equation is formed. A computation basis uses the ephimeride differences and an orthogonal vector. The method offers convenience, speed, simplicity, low dimensionality, and precision, with no operational constraints.     

Induction of hypoxic root metabolism results from physical limitations in O2 bioavailability in microgravity.

Numerous spaceflight experiments have noted changes in the roots that are consistent with hypoxia in the root zone. These observations include general ultrastructure analysis and biochemical measurements to direct measurements of stress specific enzymes. In experiments that have monitored alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), the data shows this hypoxically responsive gene is induced and is associated with increased ADH activity in microgravity. These changes in ADH could be induced either by spaceflight hypoxia resulting from inhibition of gravity mediated O2 transport, or by a non-specific stress response due to inhibition of gravisensing. We tested these hypotheses in a series of two experiments. The objective of the first experiment was to determine if physical changes in gravity-mediated O2 transport can be directly measured, while the second series of experiments tested whether disruption of gravisensing can induce a non-specific ADH response. To directly measure O2 bioavailability as a function of gravity, we designed a sensor that mimics metabolic oxygen consumption in the rhizosphere. Because of these criteria, the sensor is sensitive to any changes in root O2 bioavailability that may occur in microgravity. In a KC-135 experiment, the sensor was implanted in a moist granular clay media and exposed to microgravity during parabolic flight. The resulting data indicated that root O2 bioavailability decreased in phase with gravity. In experiments that tested for non-specific induction of ADH, we compared the response of transgenic Arabidopsis plants (ADH promoted GUS marker gene) exposed to clinostat, control, and waterlogged conditions. The plants were grown on agar slats in a growth chamber before being exposed to the experimental treatments. The plants were stained for GUS activity localization, and subjected to biochemical tests for ADH, and GUS enzyme activity. These tests showed that the waterlogging treatment induced significant increases in GUS and ADH enzyme activities, while the control and clinostat treatments showed no response. This work demonstrates: (1) the inhibition of gravity-driven convective transport can reduce the O2 bioavailability to the root tip, and (2) the perturbation of gravisensing by clinostat rotation does not induce a nonspecific stress response involving ADH. Together these experiments support the microgravity convection inhibition model for explaining changes in root metabolism during spaceflight.     

The extension of explosive events from the transition region to the corona

We describe the properties of high velocity events in the corona and upper transition region and propose that they are the same phenomenon as the well studied explosive events seen in the lower transition region around T=10⁵ K. Furthermore, we discuss how the SOHO spectrometers, CDS and SUMER, may be used to check this conjecture. Magnetic reconnection has been considered a strong candidate for the physical mechanism causing explosive events. We present a phenomenological model showing how some of the observed properties of explosive events may be explained by reconnection occurring in small magnetic loops.